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    <title>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️'s bookshelf: all</title>
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    <description><![CDATA[⚔️ readerguy ⚔️'s bookshelf: all]]></description>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 13 Sep 2026 17:00:11 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[The Wolves of War (The Wolfheart Chronicles, #1)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8943557535?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>244960795</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>THE WOLVES OF WAR ARE BARING THEIR FANGS</b><br /><br />The Clans once lived freely, honouring their gods and traditions. Then the northern invaders unleashed a tide of blood and fire. Now the Clans are a conquered people.<br /><br />Ivan cares not for wars or kings. His only concern is the safety of his family, especially his daughter Halia, whom he would protect with his life. Halia has been trapped in her own body since birth, yet at night she has dreams of running with wolves and speaking with fae creatures of the forest. Many believe her cursed, but Halia's awakening powers may be the only way she and her family can survive the coming storm.<br /><br />For the wolves of war are stalking the horizon. Two princes have become mortal enemies, and an iron-toothed witch haunts the shadows. As mighty nations clash, Halia must master her strange magic to protect those she loves. To do so, she must accept a terrifying truth.<br /><br />Sometimes, the only way through the darkness is to embrace it.]]></book_description>
    <book id="244960795">
      <num_pages>496</num_pages>
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    <author_name>John Gwynne</author_name>
    <isbn>0356527875</isbn>
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    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
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    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
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    <average_rating>4.59</average_rating>
    <book_published>2026</book_published>
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                                      author: John Gwynne<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.59<br/>
                                      book published: 2026<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/09/13<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 13 Sep 2026 17:00:03 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>The Demon Star</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8943557182?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>240360588</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Gods rule this planet. Demons stalk its canyons while Kings beg for mercy. Can three mere humans rewrite its destiny?<br /><br />The otherworldly religious conflict of Dune, the cosmic strangeness of Gideon the Ninth, and the heart-pounding action of Red Rising converge in this horror-tinged epic science fantasy debut.<br /><br />Ysira Naktis was a human sacrifice, marked for death. Unlike the thousands ‘harvested’ each year, though, she did the unthinkable. She survived—and what she brought back with her could change the fate of worlds.<br /><br />When Ysira’s estranged son is chosen to become the vessel of a god-killing demon, she is faced with a choice: allow him to harness cosmic power at an unspeakable cost, or doom millions to save him. She finds an unlikely ally in Brother Jacen Kheris, once a gifted exorcist, now a guilt-ridden addict, desperate for purpose.<br /><br />From a demon-haunted canyon to a starbound satellite, they must battle their way through cultists, aliens, and the gods themselves. The truths they unearth are deeper and more sinister than anything they could have imagined.<br /><br />In this cinematic thrill ride, Jesse Aragon plunges us into a world as intricate and inventive as it is brutal.]]></book_description>
    <book id="240360588">
      <num_pages>400</num_pages>
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    <author_name>Jesse Aragon</author_name>
    <isbn>0756420539</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
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    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.00</average_rating>
    <book_published>2026</book_published>
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      <![CDATA[
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                                      author: Jesse Aragon<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.00<br/>
                                      book published: 2026<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/09/13<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 13 Sep 2026 16:36:47 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[The Price of Power (Dreams of Dust and Steel, #1)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8943505643?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>229172200</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>Prince Barodane could not hold back the darkness. Not even in himself. He laid an innocent city in its grave and then died a hero.</b><br /><br />In his absence, war whispers across the land.<br /><br />Power-hungry highborn dispatch spies and assassins to the shadows as they maneuver for the throne, while an even greater threat rises in the South. Monsters and cultists flock to the banners of a mad prophet determined to control reality…and then shatter it.<br /><br />Destiny stalks three to the brink of oblivion.<br /><br />A dead prince who isn’t dead. Barodane buried his shameful past in a stupor of drugs, drink, and crime. Now, he’d rather watch the world fall apart than wear the crown again.<br /><br />An orphan with hero’s blood who's forced to make a harrowing betray her country or sacrifice her first love.<br /><br />And a powerful seer who has no choice at all–her grandson must die.<br /><br />If any of them fails to pay the price…<br /><br /><b>The cost will be the world’s complete annihilation.</b><br /><br /><i>Perfect for fans of The First Law, A Game of Thrones, The Five Warrior Angels, Kings of Paradise, and A Land Fit for Heroes.</i>]]></book_description>
    <book id="229172200">
      <num_pages>500</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Michael Michel</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
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    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.10</average_rating>
    <book_published>2023</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/229172200-the-price-of-power?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="The Price of Power (Dreams of Dust and Steel, #1)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1742047505l/229172200._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Michael Michel<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.10<br/>
                                      book published: 2023<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/09/13<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 13 Sep 2026 16:33:43 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Monstrous Bitch: A History of Terrifying Women]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8943499332?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>246857017</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[How an ancient myth about a sexually voracious, baby-slaying, loudmouthed demoness became the defining misogynistic archetype of Western civilization<br /><br />For as long as human societies have been telling stories, the patriarchy has felt threatened by women. In this book, Eleanor Johnson provides an engaging cultural history of a figure she calls the “monstrous bitch,” the notorious female who has haunted the patriarchal imagination for centuries, feared for her sexual promiscuity, her exercise of reproductive agency and control, and her outspoken way of contesting patriarchal power.<br /><br />In a narrative brimming with insight, Johnson traces the origins of female monstrosity to the demoness Lamashtu of ancient Mesopotamia, showing how this infanticidal, hypersexual, loudmouthed monster appears in different guises throughout history. In classical Greece, she reemerges as the sorceress Medea, the child-devouring monster Lamia, and the vengeful Furies. In the medieval and early modern periods, she is an oversexed, baby-slaying, spellcasting witch; in the Romantic and Victorian eras, a vampiress; and in the modern age of psychoanalysis, a mental patient. After this longue durée history, Johnson shows how monstrous bitchery has been challenged and reinterpreted in contemporary cinematic popular culture, becoming an expression of heroism and resistance in films like The Exorcist, The Hunger, and Species. She demonstrates how deeply embedded the roots of misogyny have become, and why it is more critical today than ever that we expose and address them.<br /><br />An irreverent look at a pervasive trope that runs through four thousand years of Western culture, Monstrous Bitch reveals that while representations of the powerful woman have evolved over time, the fear and demonization of her remains the same.]]></book_description>
    <book id="246857017">
      <num_pages>344</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Eleanor Johnson</author_name>
    <isbn>0691291667</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</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>4.40</average_rating>
    <book_published>2026</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/246857017-monstrous-bitch?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Monstrous Bitch: A History of Terrifying Women" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1778707999l/246857017._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Eleanor Johnson<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.40<br/>
                                      book published: 2026<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/09/13<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8943497986?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 13 Sep 2026 16:33:04 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Fruit Fly</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8943497986?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>243596291</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<i>
  <b>Go gay. Go sad. Go dark.</b>
</i><br /><b>A washed-up author will stop at nothing to claw her way back to relevancy—even if it means appropriating a young gay man’s tragic story.</b><br /><br />Mallory Maddox is buried under seven years of writer’s block. With her status as a literary sensation fizzling, she’ll do anything she can to resurrect her career. Inspiration needs to strike—and fast.<br /><br />Enter Leo. He’s a struggling addict sleeping under bridges and trading sex for survival. He’s vulnerable. He’s enigmatic. He’s exactly what Mallory has been looking for. <br /><br />Mallory needs Leo if she wants another bestseller. The world needs Leo’s story right now, and Mallory believes she deserves to tell it. Really, it’s her story—she’s the one who wrote it, after all. <br /><br />But as secrets threaten to unravel more than just her career, Mallory must decide how far she will go to pen the perfect story. <br /><br />A razor-sharp satirical thriller, Fruit Fly will appeal to fans of R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface and Yomi Adegoke’s The List.]]></book_description>
    <book id="243596291">
      <num_pages>384</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Josh  Silver</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</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>4.18</average_rating>
    <book_published>2026</book_published>
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      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/243596291-fruit-fly?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Fruit Fly" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1774327034l/243596291._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Josh  Silver<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.18<br/>
                                      book published: 2026<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/09/13<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8939945093?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sat, 12 Sep 2026 10:21:18 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>The Odyssey</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8939945093?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>1381</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<i>Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns<br />driven time and again off course, once he had plundered<br />the hallowed heights of Troy.</i><br /><br />So begins Robert Fagles's magnificent translation of the <i>Odyssey</i>.<br /><br />If <i>The Iliad</i> is the world's greatest war epic, <i>The Odyssey</i> is literature's grandest evocation of the everyman's journey through life. During his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, Odysseus relies on his wit and wiles for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces.<br /><br />In the myths and legends retold here, Fagles has captured the energy and poetry of Homer's original in a bold, contemporary idiom. It's a version to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery.<br /><br />Renowned classicist Bernard Knox's superb Introduction and textual commentary provide new insights and background information for the general reader and scholar alike, intensifying the strength of Fagles's translation.]]></book_description>
    <book id="1381">
      <num_pages>541</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Homer</author_name>
    <isbn>0143039954</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
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    <user_shelves>did-not-finish</user_shelves>
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    <average_rating>3.82</average_rating>
    <book_published>-800</book_published>
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      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1381.The_Odyssey?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="The Odyssey" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1711957706l/1381._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Homer<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.82<br/>
                                      book published: -800<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/09/12<br/>
                                      shelves: did-not-finish<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Fri, 11 Sep 2026 22:36:42 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8938896353?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>542700</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[When <i>Trauma and Recovery</i> was first published in 1992, it was hailed as a groundbreaking work. In the intervening years, Herman’s volume has changed the way we think about and treat traumatic events and trauma victims. <br /><br />In a new afterword, Herman chronicles the incredible response the book has elicited and explains how the issues surrounding the topic have shifted within the clinical community and the culture at large. <i>Trauma and Recovery</i> brings a new level of understanding to a set of problems usually considered individually. Herman draws on her own cutting-edge research in domestic violence as well as on the vast literature of combat veterans and victims of political terror, to show the parallels between private terrors such as rape and public traumas such as terrorism. The book puts individual experience in a broader political frame, arguing that psychological trauma can be understood only in a social context. <br /><br />Meticulously documented and frequently using the victims’ own words as well as those from classic literary works and prison diaries, <i>Trauma and Recovery</i> is a powerful work that will continue to profoundly impact our thinking.]]></book_description>
    <book id="542700">
      <num_pages>247</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Judith Lewis Herman</author_name>
    <isbn>0465087302</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Fri, 11 Sep 2026 22:36:42 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Fri, 11 Sep 2026 22:36:42 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.38</average_rating>
    <book_published>1992</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/542700.Trauma_and_Recovery?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348664543l/542700._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Judith Lewis Herman<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.38<br/>
                                      book published: 1992<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/09/11<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8885296276?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sat, 05 Sep 2026 12:47:54 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>People We Meet on Vacation</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8885296276?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>55076069</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1773657247l/55076069._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_medium_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1773657247l/55076069._SX98_.jpg]]></book_medium_image_url>
    <book_large_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1773657247l/55076069._SY475_.jpg]]></book_large_image_url>
    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>From the <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author of <i>Beach Read</i> comes a sparkling new novel that will leave you with the warm, hazy afterglow usually reserved for the best vacations.</b><br /><br /><i>Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.</i><br /><br />Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She's a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart — she's in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown — but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.<br /> <br />Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven't spoken since.<br /> <br />Poppy has everything she should want, but she's stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together — lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.<br /> <br />Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?]]></book_description>
    <book id="55076069">
      <num_pages>382</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Emily Henry</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>3</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sat, 05 Sep 2026 12:47:54 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sun, 23 Aug 2026 13:30:57 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves></user_shelves>
    <user_review><![CDATA[3.5 stars. A very quick ride. I don’t think it was as good as Beach Read (there is a possibility that since Beach Read was my first rom-com book I’ve put it on a high pedestal, because all in all these two aren’t very different) but I still enjoyed it. Emily Henry is great at writing both funny and romantic, heartwarming moments (the humour is a Millennial’s humour, it’s great; doesn’t always land the way it should maybe but gets a laugh out of me nonetheless). Alex and Poppy’s relationship was fun to read and while the third act conflict was a tad bit contrived, I liked how the entire arc played out. Worth the read!]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.94</average_rating>
    <book_published>2021</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55076069-people-we-meet-on-vacation?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="People We Meet on Vacation" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1773657247l/55076069._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Emily Henry<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.94<br/>
                                      book published: 2021<br/>
                                      rating: 3<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/08/23<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/09/05<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/>3.5 stars. A very quick ride. I don’t think it was as good as Beach Read (there is a possibility that since Beach Read was my first rom-com book I’ve put it on a high pedestal, because all in all these two aren’t very different) but I still enjoyed it. Emily Henry is great at writing both funny and romantic, heartwarming moments (the humour is a Millennial’s humour, it’s great; doesn’t always land the way it should maybe but gets a laugh out of me nonetheless). Alex and Poppy’s relationship was fun to read and while the third act conflict was a tad bit contrived, I liked how the entire arc played out. Worth the read!<br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8921485504?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sat, 05 Sep 2026 12:38:22 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>The Great Gatsby</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8921485504?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>41733839</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1650033243l/41733839._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
    <book_small_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1650033243l/41733839._SY75_.jpg]]></book_small_image_url>
    <book_medium_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1650033243l/41733839._SX98_.jpg]]></book_medium_image_url>
    <book_large_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1650033243l/41733839._SY475_.jpg]]></book_large_image_url>
    <book_description><![CDATA[<i>Alternate covers of this ISBN can be found <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/167078023" rel="nofollow noopener">here</a>, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4671" rel="nofollow noopener">here</a> and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13634490-The-Great-Gatsby" rel="nofollow noopener">here</a>.</i><br /><br /><b>James L. W. West III to include the author’s final revisions and features a note on the composition and text, a personal foreword by Fitzgerald’s granddaughter, Eleanor Lanahan—and a new introduction by two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward. </b><br /><br />The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when The New York Times noted “gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession,” it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.]]></book_description>
    <book id="41733839">
      <num_pages>180</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>F. Scott Fitzgerald</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>3</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Sat, 5 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sat, 05 Sep 2026 12:38:22 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sat, 05 Sep 2026 12:37:52 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves></user_shelves>
    <user_review>More of a 3.5</user_review>
    <average_rating>3.94</average_rating>
    <book_published>1925</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41733839-the-great-gatsby?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="The Great Gatsby" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1650033243l/41733839._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: F. Scott Fitzgerald<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.94<br/>
                                      book published: 1925<br/>
                                      rating: 3<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/09/05<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/09/05<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/>More of a 3.5<br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8916955844?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Thu, 03 Sep 2026 17:23:19 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[進撃の巨人 24 [Shingeki no Kyojin 24]]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8916955844?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>35709632</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1510171678l/35709632._SX50_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
    <book_small_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1510171678l/35709632._SX50_.jpg]]></book_small_image_url>
    <book_medium_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1510171678l/35709632._SX98_.jpg]]></book_medium_image_url>
    <book_large_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1510171678l/35709632._SY475_.jpg]]></book_large_image_url>
    <book_description><![CDATA[巨人がすべてを支配する世界。巨人の餌と化した人類は、巨大な壁を築き、壁外への自由と引き換えに侵略を防いでいた。だが、名ばかりの平和は壁を越える大巨人の出現により崩れ、絶望の闘いが始まってしまう。]]></book_description>
    <book id="35709632">
      <num_pages>192</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Hajime Isayama</author_name>
    <isbn>406510548X</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Thu, 3 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Thu, 03 Sep 2026 17:23:19 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Thu, 03 Sep 2026 17:23:08 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves></user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.47</average_rating>
    <book_published>2017</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35709632-24-shingeki-no-kyojin-24?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="進撃の巨人 24 [Shingeki no Kyojin 24]" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1510171678l/35709632._SX50_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Hajime Isayama<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.47<br/>
                                      book published: 2017<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/09/03<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/09/03<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8905592964?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 30 Aug 2026 20:51:02 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>The Things We Never Say</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8905592964?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>242082631</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1771952095l/242082631._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_medium_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1771952095l/242082631._SX98_.jpg]]></book_medium_image_url>
    <book_large_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1771952095l/242082631._SY475_.jpg]]></book_large_image_url>
    <book_description><![CDATA[Artie Dam is living a double life. He spends his days teaching history to eleventh graders, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He goes to holiday parties with his wife of three decades, makes small talk with neighbors, and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. He is, by all appearances, present and alive. But inside, Artie is plagued by feelings of isolation. He looks out at a world gone mad—at himself and the people around him—and turns a question over and over in his mind: How is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us?<br /><br />And then, one day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world. Once he learns it, he is forced to chart a new course, to reconsider the relationships he holds most dear—and to make peace with the mysteries at the heart of our existence.<br /><br />Elizabeth Strout, as we have come to expect, delivers a moving exploration of the human condition—one that brims with compassion for each and every one of her indelible characters. With exquisite prose and profound insight, <i>The Things We Never Say </i>takes one man’s fears and loneliness and makes them universal. And in the same breath, captures the abiding love that sustains and holds us all.]]></book_description>
    <book id="242082631">
      <num_pages>224</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Elizabeth Strout</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sun, 30 Aug 2026 20:51:02 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sun, 30 Aug 2026 20:51:01 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.01</average_rating>
    <book_published>2026</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/242082631-the-things-we-never-say?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="The Things We Never Say" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1771952095l/242082631._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Elizabeth Strout<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.01<br/>
                                      book published: 2026<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/08/30<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8871070808?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:07:01 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Partita</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8871070808?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>248116509</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1776353602l/248116509._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_medium_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1776353602l/248116509._SX98_.jpg]]></book_medium_image_url>
    <book_large_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1776353602l/248116509._SY475_.jpg]]></book_large_image_url>
    <book_description><![CDATA[A deeply moving new novel about life and art from one of America’s greatest writers.<br /><br />Livia Cable has made her peace with her marriage and modest livelihood in the farm country where she grew up, until a shocking phone call from an old lover shakes her to the core. Decades earlier, this man knew her as Livia Bohusz, a music conservatory student estranged from her home and family, uncertain of anything except her passion for music and promise as an extraordinary pianist. His request, now, to see her again stirs up ghosts she’s kept at bay for a lifetime.<br /><br />Shifting between past and present, Livia’s decision to meet or reject the reunion means confronting step by step, in memories framed as musical dances, the traumas of childhood loss, abandonment, self-immolating passion, and perilous attachment to a man who broke her belief in love and ruptured the course of her life.<br /><br />With razor-sharp acuity and deep affection, Pulitzer Prize winner Barbara Kingsolver’s unforgettable new novel reflects on class barriers, the risks of ambition, and the timeless love affair between life and art.]]></book_description>
    <book id="248116509">
      <num_pages>408</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Barbara Kingsolver</author_name>
    <isbn>0571404731</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:07:01 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:07:00 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.32</average_rating>
    <book_published>2026</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/248116509-partita?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Partita" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1776353602l/248116509._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Barbara Kingsolver<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.32<br/>
                                      book published: 2026<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/08/18<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5758831823?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Tue, 18 Aug 2026 11:12:34 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5758831823?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>43868109</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1611952534l/43868109._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
    <book_small_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1611952534l/43868109._SY75_.jpg]]></book_small_image_url>
    <book_medium_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1611952534l/43868109._SX98_.jpg]]></book_medium_image_url>
    <book_large_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1611952534l/43868109.jpg]]></book_large_image_url>
    <book_description><![CDATA[The highly anticipated portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, by the prize-winning, bestselling author of Say Nothing .The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations to the arts and sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing OxyContin, a blockbuster painkiller that was a catalyst for the opioid crisis.Empire of Pain is a masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, exhaustively documented and ferociously compelling.]]></book_description>
    <book id="43868109">
      <num_pages>535</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Patrick Radden Keefe</author_name>
    <isbn>0385545681</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>5</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
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    <user_shelves>non-fiction</user_shelves>
    <user_review><![CDATA[Phenomenal in a way only Patrick Radden Keefe’s work can be. ]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.53</average_rating>
    <book_published>2021</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
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                                      author: Patrick Radden Keefe<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.53<br/>
                                      book published: 2021<br/>
                                      rating: 5<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/08/18<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/08/18<br/>
                                      shelves: non-fiction<br/>
                                      review: <br/>Phenomenal in a way only Patrick Radden Keefe’s work can be. <br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sat, 15 Aug 2026 09:06:12 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Bodies of Magic</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8861725650?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>244947580</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b><i>Grey’s Anatomy </i>meets <i>A Deadly Education</i> in this dark academia fantasy from <i>USA Today </i>bestselling author Freya Marske.</b><br /><br />At the Academie of the Grand Duchy of Sieuxerr, every mage with the healer’s gift has five years to master their power and to prepare for the infamous Grand Exam—a five-day trial whose results will determine their entire future.<br /><br />The list of exam rules includes:<br />• You will perform five practical cases.<br />• Your exam group is chosen at random.<br />• You pass together, or fail together.<br /><br />It does not include:<br />• On the first day, your exam group will find a classmate's dead body in the exam hall.<br /><br />And as they will soon discover, this particular group all have something to hide... and all have a connection with the dead girl, a brilliant scholar who would have been first in their class.<br /><br />Five scholars. Five secrets. Five days in which to solve a murder, pass the most important exam of their lives, and uncover a secret larger than all of their own combined. One with the potential to change the world.<br /><br />Are you ready?<br /><br />Let’s begin.]]></book_description>
    <book id="244947580">
      <num_pages>464</num_pages>
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    <author_name>Freya Marske</author_name>
    <isbn>1250341655</isbn>
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    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
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    <average_rating>4.05</average_rating>
    <book_published>2026</book_published>
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                                      author: Freya Marske<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.05<br/>
                                      book published: 2026<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/08/15<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Mon, 03 Aug 2026 17:50:13 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (The Tales of Dunk and Egg, #1-3)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8828974278?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>18635622</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[These never-before-collected adventures recount an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne, and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living consciousness. Before Tyrion Lannister and Podrick Payne, there was Dunk and Egg. A young, naïve but ultimately courageous hedge knight, Ser Duncan the Tall towers above his rivals—in stature if not experience. Tagging along is his diminutive squire, a boy called Egg—whose true name is hidden from all he and Dunk encounter. Though more improbable heroes may not be found in all of Westeros, great destinies lay ahead for these two . . . as do powerful foes, royal intrigue, and outrageous exploits.]]></book_description>
    <book id="18635622">
      <num_pages>355</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>George R.R. Martin</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Mon, 3 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
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    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.28</average_rating>
    <book_published>2013</book_published>
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      <![CDATA[
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                                      author: George R.R. Martin<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.28<br/>
                                      book published: 2013<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/08/03<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/08/03<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2504650588?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Mon, 13 Jul 2026 04:56:08 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[The Last King of Faerie (The Wicked Powers, #1)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2504650588?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>247655090</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>The highly anticipated first book of The Wicked Powers, the final Shadowhunters trilogy! #1 <i>New York Times </i>bestselling author Cassandra Clare brings the saga that began in The Mortal Instruments to a stunning conclusion.</b><br /><br />It’s Drusilla Blackthorn's third year at Shadowhunter Academy when a chance encounter at a nightclub turns into a kidnapping. Dru finds herself held prisoner by Prince Ash Morgenstern in the land of Faerie, a place that proves just as dangerous as it is beautiful. Despite herself, Dru is drawn to Ash and the darkness that seems to surround him—but one false move could cost her life.<br /><br />Meanwhile, a shocking disappearance rocks the foundations of the Shadowhunter world. Kit Herondale and Ty Blackthorn must set aside the bitterness that lingers between them and join forces on a perilous quest to save everything they cherish.<br /><br />The first installment of the long-awaited concluding trilogy to the Shadowhunter Chronicles has all the nail-biting adventure, heart-pounding romance, and trademark humor that makes Cassandra Clare the reigning queen of YA romantasy.]]></book_description>
    <book id="247655090">
      <num_pages></num_pages>
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    <author_name>Cassandra Clare</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
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    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.43</average_rating>
    <book_published>2026</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
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                                      author: Cassandra Clare<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.43<br/>
                                      book published: 2026<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/07/13<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6282182212?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Mon, 13 Jul 2026 02:36:36 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>The Talisman</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6282182212?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>13444</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Jack Sawyer, twelve years old, is about to begin a most fantastic journey—an exalting, terrifying quest for the Talisman. Only the Talisman can save his dying mother and defeat the enemy who is out to destroy them. But to reach his goal, Jack must make his way not only across the breadth of the United States but through the wondrous and menacing Territories as well.<br /><br />The Territories lie as firmly in the imagination as Atlantis or Oz; they are as real as every reader's own vision of that parallel world which can only be evoked in the mind's mysterious eye. In the Territories Jack finds a world little removed from the Earth's own Dark Ages: though the air is so sweet and clear a man can smell a radish being pulled from the ground a mile away, a life can be snuffed out instantly in the continuing struggle between good and evil. Jack discovers 'twinners', odd reflections of the people he knows on Earth—most notably the dying Queen Laura, the 'twinner' of Jack's own imperiled mother. But only a few can flip from one world to the other like Jack's late father, his malevolent uncle Morgan Sloat, and Jack himself.<br /><br />As Jack makes his way westward towards the redemptive Talisman, a dual array of heart-stopping encounters challenges him at every step—from a terrifying period of captivity in an orphanage run by a sadistic religious fanatic, to sudden and murderous attacks by enemies of the Queen.<br /><br />Stephen King and Peter Straub have combined their talents to create an unforgettable epic of fantasy, adventure and resounding triumph.]]></book_description>
    <book id="13444">
      <num_pages>646</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Stephen  King</author_name>
    <isbn>0670691992</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Mon, 13 Jul 2026 02:36:36 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Wed, 21 Feb 2024 07:21:19 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.97</average_rating>
    <book_published>1984</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13444.The_Talisman?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="The Talisman" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1699398499l/13444._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Stephen  King<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.97<br/>
                                      book published: 1984<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/07/13<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8632334135?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Mon, 06 Jul 2026 18:10:44 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8632334135?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>238210738</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[After she encounters a poem about love and friendship etched on the Homomonument in Amsterdam, Hélène Giannecchini is moved to attempt to do justice to a form of relation often subordinated to romance. A friendship is a filiation we choose, one that can reconfigure our understanding of co-existence. It holds love, laughter, dissent and solidarity; it can be a site of political struggle, of reinvention and rest. Thinking back to her own unconventional family formation, she sets out to piece together an alternative genealogy of lives excluded from normative discourses, whose traces may only remain in memory and archival fragments. In searching and sensitive prose, Giannecchini sifts the past to bring marginal existences into communion with each other, preserved through loving acts of witness and made full of meaning by friendship's generative force. Roving from Saint-Just's revolutionary ideal of amity to Donna Gottschalk's photography documenting radical lesbian organizing in 1960s and '70s New York, interspersed with unpublished images acquired magpie-like through chance and circumstance, <em>An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail</em> forms a slantwise account of queer life in the twentieth century, and a moving testament to the liberatory power of friendship.<br />]]></book_description>
    <book id="238210738">
      <num_pages>204</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Hélène Giannecchini</author_name>
    <isbn>1804272221</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
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    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.44</average_rating>
    <book_published></book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
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                                      author: Hélène Giannecchini<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.44<br/>
                                      book published: <br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/07/06<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 24 Jun 2026 17:14:35 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Discourse on Colonialism</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8714117144?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>86598</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[This classic work, first published in France in 1955, profoundly influenced the generation of scholars and activists at the forefront of liberation struggles in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Nearly twenty years later, when published for the first time in English, <i>Discourse on Colonialism</i> inspired a new generation engaged in the Civil Rights, Black Power, and antiwar movements. <br /><br />Aimé Césaire eloquently describes the brutal impact of capitalism and colonialism on both the colonizer and colonized, exposing the contradictions and hypocrisy implicit in western notions of "progress" and "civilization" upon encountering the "savage," "uncultured," or "primitive." He reaffirms African values, identity, and culture, and their relevance, reminding us that "the relationship between consciousness and reality is extremely complex. . . . It is equally necessary to decolonize our minds, our inner life, at the same time that we decolonize society." <br /><br />An interview with Aimé Césaire by the poet René Depestre is also included.]]></book_description>
    <book id="86598">
      <num_pages>102</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Aimé Césaire</author_name>
    <isbn>1583670254</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Wed, 24 Jun 2026 17:14:35 -0700]]></user_date_added>
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    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.44</average_rating>
    <book_published>1950</book_published>
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      <![CDATA[
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                                      author: Aimé Césaire<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.44<br/>
                                      book published: 1950<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/06/24<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8714113064?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 24 Jun 2026 17:12:41 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Blood in My Eye</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8714113064?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>489637</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<i>Blood in My Eye</i> was completed only days before its author was killed. George Jackson died on August 21, 1971, at the hands of San Quentin prison guards during an alleged escape attempt. At eighteen, George Jackson was convicted of stealing seventy dollars from a gas station and was sentenced from one year to life. He was to spent the rest of his life—eleven years—in the California prison system, seven in solitary confinement. In prison he read widely and transformed himself into an activist and political theoretician who defined himself as a revolutionary.]]></book_description>
    <book id="489637">
      <num_pages>195</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>George L. Jackson</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Wed, 24 Jun 2026 17:12:41 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Wed, 24 Jun 2026 17:12:40 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.56</average_rating>
    <book_published>1972</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/489637.Blood_in_My_Eye?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Blood in My Eye" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1371519386l/489637._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: George L. Jackson<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.56<br/>
                                      book published: 1972<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/06/24<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4258249011?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 24 Jun 2026 17:09:54 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Empire of Silence (The Sun Eater, #1)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4258249011?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>36454667</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1523897945l/36454667._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Hadrian Marlowe, a man revered as a hero and despised as a murderer, chronicles his tale in the galaxy-spanning debut of the Sun Eater series, merging the best of space opera and epic fantasy.<br /><br /><br />It was not his war.<br /><br />On the wrong planet, at the right time, for the best reasons, Hadrian Marlowe started down a path that could only end in fire. The galaxy remembers him as a hero: the man who burned every last alien Cielcin from the sky. They remember him as a monster: the devil who destroyed a sun, casually annihilating four billion human lives–even the Emperor himself–against Imperial orders.<br /><br />But Hadrian was not a hero. He was not a monster. He was not even a soldier.<br /><br />Fleeing his father and a future as a torturer, Hadrian finds himself stranded on a strange, backwater world. Forced to fight as a gladiator and navigate the intrigues of a foreign planetary court, he will find himself fighting a war he did not start, for an Empire he does not love, against an enemy he will never understand.]]></book_description>
    <book id="36454667">
      <num_pages>753</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Christopher Ruocchio</author_name>
    <isbn>0756413028</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>3</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Wed, 24 Jun 2026 17:09:54 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sun, 26 Sep 2021 12:36:04 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>science-fiction, 2025-tbr</user_shelves>
    <user_review><![CDATA[<b>Light spoilers. <br /><br />3.5 stars. Can’t believe I have actually finished this.</b> I have been reading this off and on since August of 2025, and now it’s finally completed. To start with the positives, the beginning and end of the book were very good, specifically the last 20%. Moreover, Ruocchio is a very good writer and world-builder. He describes scenes with a really vivid, engaging style that draws the reader in and makes things easy to imagine. The world (or, rather, universe) building is amazing as well. Each and every culture, planet, city, house, etc. is incredibly interesting and well-thought-out. Some of the side characters that show up are really fun as well, as are the antagonists. Hadrian, as a protagonist, is well done as well. For some negatives, I’d say that the middle really, really drags, especially when we first get to Emesh. I found myself wholly and woefully interested in Cat, and only slightly interested once we got to the Colosso. Additionally, while Ruocchio is obviously a great writer, I find that he overwrites a lot as well. He tells instead of shows sometimes, is quite verbose at points, and is needlessly melodramatic at quite mundane moments (which is purposeful, that is Hadrian’s voice and tone, but it does get grating after a while, aka 700 pages and 26 audiobook hours of it). Nevertheless, the ending was quite good, and I’m excited to jump into the other books, which apparently are much better. Not sure if I’m going to complete the series (and, if I do decide to do that, I’m not sure how long that would take, considering this first volume took me 10 months, and there are countless sequels and novellas), however, I would recommend it if you’re into space opera/scifi-fantasy. <br /><br />Side note: I really don’t understand the Dune comparison. This is very much not Dune.]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.91</average_rating>
    <book_published>2018</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36454667-empire-of-silence?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Empire of Silence (The Sun Eater, #1)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1523897945l/36454667._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Christopher Ruocchio<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.91<br/>
                                      book published: 2018<br/>
                                      rating: 3<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/06/18<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/06/24<br/>
                                      shelves: science-fiction, 2025-tbr<br/>
                                      review: <br/><b>Light spoilers. <br /><br />3.5 stars. Can’t believe I have actually finished this.</b> I have been reading this off and on since August of 2025, and now it’s finally completed. To start with the positives, the beginning and end of the book were very good, specifically the last 20%. Moreover, Ruocchio is a very good writer and world-builder. He describes scenes with a really vivid, engaging style that draws the reader in and makes things easy to imagine. The world (or, rather, universe) building is amazing as well. Each and every culture, planet, city, house, etc. is incredibly interesting and well-thought-out. Some of the side characters that show up are really fun as well, as are the antagonists. Hadrian, as a protagonist, is well done as well. For some negatives, I’d say that the middle really, really drags, especially when we first get to Emesh. I found myself wholly and woefully interested in Cat, and only slightly interested once we got to the Colosso. Additionally, while Ruocchio is obviously a great writer, I find that he overwrites a lot as well. He tells instead of shows sometimes, is quite verbose at points, and is needlessly melodramatic at quite mundane moments (which is purposeful, that is Hadrian’s voice and tone, but it does get grating after a while, aka 700 pages and 26 audiobook hours of it). Nevertheless, the ending was quite good, and I’m excited to jump into the other books, which apparently are much better. Not sure if I’m going to complete the series (and, if I do decide to do that, I’m not sure how long that would take, considering this first volume took me 10 months, and there are countless sequels and novellas), however, I would recommend it if you’re into space opera/scifi-fantasy. <br /><br />Side note: I really don’t understand the Dune comparison. This is very much not Dune.<br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6547768714?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Thu, 04 Jun 2026 20:56:49 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>The House of the Spirits</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6547768714?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>9328</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1621672028l/9328._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_large_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1621672028l/9328._SY475_.jpg]]></book_large_image_url>
    <book_description><![CDATA[In one of the most important and beloved Latin American works of the twentieth century, Isabel Allende weaves a luminous tapestry of three generations of the Trueba family, revealing both triumphs and tragedies. Here is patriarch Esteban, whose wild desires and political machinations are tempered only by his love for his ethereal wife, Clara, a woman touched by an otherworldly hand. Their daughter, Blanca, whose forbidden love for a man Esteban has deemed unworthy infuriates her father, yet will produce his greatest joy: his granddaughter Alba, a beautiful, ambitious girl who will lead the family and their country into a revolutionary future.<br /><br />The House of the Spirits is an enthralling saga that spans decades and lives, twining the personal and the political into an epic novel of love, magic, and fate.]]></book_description>
    <book id="9328">
      <num_pages>512</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Isabel Allende</author_name>
    <isbn>0553383809</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Thu, 04 Jun 2026 20:56:49 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Thu, 30 May 2024 21:09:45 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read, summer</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.27</average_rating>
    <book_published>1982</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9328.The_House_of_the_Spirits?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="The House of the Spirits" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1621672028l/9328._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Isabel Allende<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.27<br/>
                                      book published: 1982<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/06/04<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read, summer<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8660430287?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Thu, 04 Jun 2026 20:53:08 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8660430287?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>12749</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1735845760l/12749._SX50_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_large_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1735845760l/12749.jpg]]></book_large_image_url>
    <book_description><![CDATA[Marcel Proust’s <i>In Search of Lost Time</i> is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar translation there has been no completely new version in English. Now, Penguin Classics brings Proust’s masterpiece to new audiences throughout the world, beginning with Lydia Davis’s internationally acclaimed translation of the first volume, <i>Swann’s Way</i>.<br /><br /><i>Swann’s Way</i> is one of the preeminent novels of childhood: a sensitive boy's impressions of his family and neighbours, all brought dazzlingly back to life years later by the taste of a madeleine. It also enfolds the short novel "Swann in Love," an incomparable study of sexual jealousy that becomes a crucial part of the vast, unfolding structure of <i>In Search of Lost Time</i>. The first volume of the work that established Proust as one of the finest voices of the modern age—satirical, skeptical, confiding, and endlessly varied in his response to the human condition—<i>Swann’s Way</i> also stands on its own as a perfect rendering of a life in art, of the past re-created through memory.]]></book_description>
    <book id="12749">
      <num_pages>468</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Marcel Proust</author_name>
    <isbn>0142437964</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Thu, 04 Jun 2026 20:53:08 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Thu, 04 Jun 2026 20:53:07 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.12</average_rating>
    <book_published>1913</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12749.Swann_s_Way?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1735845760l/12749._SX50_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Marcel Proust<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.12<br/>
                                      book published: 1913<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/06/04<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8119223712?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 13 May 2026 09:00:49 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Dead Beat (Ninth House Trilogy, #3)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8119223712?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>247785403</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1772037931l/247785403._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>The highly anticipated, explosive conclusion to the Ninth House trilogy from #1 <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author Leigh Bardugo.<br /><br />Hell is empty and all the devils are here…</b><br /><br />Alex Stern made it to hell and back more than once, but this time she left the door open behind her. Demons are creeping through the streets of New Haven and the Yale campus, feeding on the souls of the living, terrifying the dead. Alex and her allies can hunt them, but it’s only a matter of time before the gates to the underworld open and they face a war they cannot win. To stop it, they’ll have to reach deep into the secrets of Yale and its societies, and discover the truth hidden in Alex’s own blood.<br /><br />While she struggles to hold onto the dream of a future Yale once offered, Alex must contend with the machinations of a corrupt Lethe Board and a deadly vampire with his own connection to the societies. But for the first time in her life, she won’t have to face the fight alone. Dawes, Turner, Mercy, and even Tripp will have a role to play, none more so than Alex’s mentor Darlington, the golden boy who lived so long in her head, now back in the flesh and cursed with dangerous powers of his own. Hell itself is stalking the delegates of Lethe House, and they’re all about to learn that demons don’t play by human rules.]]></book_description>
    <book id="247785403">
      <num_pages>512</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Leigh Bardugo</author_name>
    <isbn>1250884314</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Wed, 13 May 2026 09:00:49 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Wed, 03 Dec 2025 13:45:12 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.58</average_rating>
    <book_published>2026</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/247785403-dead-beat?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Dead Beat (Ninth House Trilogy, #3)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1772037931l/247785403._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Leigh Bardugo<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.58<br/>
                                      book published: 2026<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/05/13<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3619638040?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sat, 09 May 2026 12:42:47 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Tigana</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3619638040?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>104089</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348738842l/104089._SX50_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[A masterful epic of magic, politics, war, and the power of love and hate — from the renowned author of The Fionavar Tapestry and Children of Earth and Sky.<br /><br />Tigana is the magical story of a beleaguered land struggling to be free. It is the tale of a people so cursed by the black sorcery of a cruel despotic king that even the name of their once-beautiful homeland cannot be spoken or remembered...<br /> <br />But years after the devastation, a handful of courageous men and women embark upon a dangerous crusade to overthrow their conquerors and bring back to the dark world the brilliance of a long-lost name...Tigana.<br /> <br />Against the magnificently rendered background of a world both sensuous and barbaric, this sweeping epic of a passionate people pursuing their dream is breathtaking in its vision, changing forever the boundaries of fantasy fiction.]]></book_description>
    <book id="104089">
      <num_pages>676</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Guy Gavriel Kay</author_name>
    <isbn>0451457765</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>5</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Sat, 9 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sat, 09 May 2026 12:42:47 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Thu, 29 Oct 2020 14:15:52 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves><![CDATA[beautiful-prose, adult, fantasy, best-books-i-read-this-decade-2020s]]></user_shelves>
    <user_review><![CDATA[<b>4.5 stars.</b> An epic, spellbinding mosaic of charismatic, complex characters, truly impeccable and immersive writing, and an awe-inspiring story. There were so many scenes I highlighted because of how deeply they resonated with me. There is probably one very evocative, well-written, moving moment for every chapter, with some chapters like the prologue, the fourth chapter, the fifth, etc. having multiple stirring scenes, making for a memorable tale. Woven through with themes of love, grief, memory, family, and the unbridled passions of a people yearning for freedom. Utterly captivating, with great world-building, plotlines and intrigue. My <i>only</i> problem/criticism was that I was really not a fan of how one of the character arcs ended, but overall, this is essential book for any fantasy lover, if I must say.<br /><br />]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.07</average_rating>
    <book_published>1990</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/104089.Tigana?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Tigana" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348738842l/104089._SX50_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Guy Gavriel Kay<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.07<br/>
                                      book published: 1990<br/>
                                      rating: 5<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/05/09<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/05/09<br/>
                                      shelves: beautiful-prose, adult, fantasy, best-books-i-read-this-decade-2020s<br/>
                                      review: <br/><b>4.5 stars.</b> An epic, spellbinding mosaic of charismatic, complex characters, truly impeccable and immersive writing, and an awe-inspiring story. There were so many scenes I highlighted because of how deeply they resonated with me. There is probably one very evocative, well-written, moving moment for every chapter, with some chapters like the prologue, the fourth chapter, the fifth, etc. having multiple stirring scenes, making for a memorable tale. Woven through with themes of love, grief, memory, family, and the unbridled passions of a people yearning for freedom. Utterly captivating, with great world-building, plotlines and intrigue. My <i>only</i> problem/criticism was that I was really not a fan of how one of the character arcs ended, but overall, this is essential book for any fantasy lover, if I must say.<br /><br /><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6917644590?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sat, 09 May 2026 12:27:03 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Madonna in a Fur Coat</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6917644590?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>27793819</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1447193500l/27793819._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<p>The bestselling Turkish classic of love and longing in a changing world, available in English for the first time.</p><br /><br /><i>'It is, perhaps, easier to dismiss a man whose face gives no indication of an inner life. And what a pity that is: a dash of curiosity is all it takes to stumble upon treasures we never expected.' </i><br /><br /><p>A shy young man leaves his home in rural Turkey to learn a trade in 1920s Berlin. The city's crowded streets, thriving arts scene, passionate politics and seedy cabarets provide the backdrop for a chance meeting with a woman, which will haunt him for the rest of his life. Emotionally powerful, intensely atmospheric and touchingly profound, <i>Madonna in a Fur Coat</i> is an unforgettable novel about new beginnings and the unfathomable nature of the human soul.</p><br /><br />'Passionate but clear . . . Ali's success [is in ] his ability to describe the emergence of a feeling, seemingly straightforward from the outside but swinging back and forth between opposite extremes at its core, revealing the tensions that accompanies such rise and fall.' Atilla Özkirimli, writer and literary historian]]></book_description>
    <book id="27793819">
      <num_pages>168</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Sabahattin Ali</author_name>
    <isbn>014198127X</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>3</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sat, 09 May 2026 12:27:03 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Fri, 11 Oct 2024 01:24:00 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves></user_shelves>
    <user_review>3.5 stars</user_review>
    <average_rating>4.15</average_rating>
    <book_published>1943</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27793819-madonna-in-a-fur-coat?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Madonna in a Fur Coat" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1447193500l/27793819._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Sabahattin Ali<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.15<br/>
                                      book published: 1943<br/>
                                      rating: 3<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/04/14<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/05/09<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/>3.5 stars<br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5059415179?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sat, 09 May 2026 12:26:48 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Stoner</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5059415179?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>166997</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1742326950l/166997._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude.<br /><br />John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.]]></book_description>
    <book id="166997">
      <num_pages>292</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>John  Williams</author_name>
    <isbn>1590171993</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Tue, 7 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sat, 09 May 2026 12:26:48 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Fri, 21 Oct 2022 16:47:53 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves></user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.36</average_rating>
    <book_published>1965</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/166997.Stoner?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Stoner" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1742326950l/166997._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: John  Williams<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.36<br/>
                                      book published: 1965<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/04/07<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/05/09<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5916131971?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sat, 09 May 2026 12:26:16 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>I Who Have Never Known Men</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5916131971?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>11996</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1636235968l/11996._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
    <book_small_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1636235968l/11996._SY75_.jpg]]></book_small_image_url>
    <book_medium_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1636235968l/11996._SY160_.jpg]]></book_medium_image_url>
    <book_large_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1636235968l/11996._SY475_.jpg]]></book_large_image_url>
    <book_description><![CDATA[<i>"As far back as I can recall, I have been in the bunker."</i><br /><br />A young woman is kept in a cage underground with thirty-nine other females, guarded by armed men who never speak; her crimes unremembered... if indeed there were crimes.<br /><br />The youngest of forty—a child with no name and no past—she survives for some purpose long forgotten in a world ravaged and wasted. In this reality where intimacy is forbidden—in the unrelenting sameness of the artificial days and nights—she knows nothing of books and time, of needs and feelings.<br /><br />Then everything changes... and nothing changes.<br /><br />A young woman who has never known men—a child who knows of no history before the bars and restraints—must now reinvent herself, piece by piece, in a place she has never been... and in the face of the most challenging and terrifying of unknowns: freedom.]]></book_description>
    <book id="11996">
      <num_pages>206</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Jacqueline Harpman</author_name>
    <isbn>0380731819</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>3</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sat, 09 May 2026 12:26:16 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Tue, 17 Oct 2023 20:09:23 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>science-fiction</user_shelves>
    <user_review>3.5 stars</user_review>
    <average_rating>4.18</average_rating>
    <book_published>1995</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11996.I_Who_Have_Never_Known_Men?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="I Who Have Never Known Men" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1636235968l/11996._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Jacqueline Harpman<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.18<br/>
                                      book published: 1995<br/>
                                      rating: 3<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/03/31<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/05/09<br/>
                                      shelves: science-fiction<br/>
                                      review: <br/>3.5 stars<br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3488388031?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 22 Apr 2026 18:16:38 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[The Jasmine Throne (The Burning Kingdoms, #1)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3488388031?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>55034066</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1603885771l/55034066._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Author of <i>Empire of Sand</i> and <i>Realm of Ash</i> Tasha Suri's <i>The Jasmine Throne</i>, beginning a new trilogy set in a world inspired by the history and epics of India, in which a captive princess and a maidservant in possession of forbidden magic become unlikely allies on a dark journey to save their empire from the princess's traitor brother.<br /><br />Imprisoned by her dictator brother, Malini spends her days in isolation in the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once the source of the powerful, magical deathless waters — but is now little more than a decaying ruin.<br /><br />Priya is a maidservant, one among several who make the treacherous journey to the top of the Hirana every night to clean Malini’s chambers. She is happy to be an anonymous drudge, so long as it keeps anyone from guessing the dangerous secret she hides.<br /><br />But when Malini accidentally bears witness to Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled. One is a vengeful princess seeking to depose her brother from his throne. The other is a priestess seeking to find her family. Together, they will change the fate of an empire.]]></book_description>
    <book id="55034066">
      <num_pages>578</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Tasha Suri</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Wed, 22 Apr 2026 18:16:38 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Mon, 10 Aug 2020 01:44:03 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>fantasy, adult</user_shelves>
    <user_review><![CDATA[Dnfing for now, will come back once my library loan is secured again.<br /><br />Updated review: That was excellent.]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.15</average_rating>
    <book_published>2021</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55034066-the-jasmine-throne?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="The Jasmine Throne (The Burning Kingdoms, #1)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1603885771l/55034066._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Tasha Suri<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.15<br/>
                                      book published: 2021<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/04/22<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/04/22<br/>
                                      shelves: fantasy, adult<br/>
                                      review: <br/>Dnfing for now, will come back once my library loan is secured again.<br /><br />Updated review: That was excellent.<br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8508886370?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Thu, 09 Apr 2026 09:18:38 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Roadside Picnic</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8508886370?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>331256</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1173812259l/331256._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a “full empty,” something goes wrong. And the news he gets from his girlfriend upon his return makes it inevitable that he’ll keep going back to the Zone, again and again, until he finds the answer to all his problems.<br /><br />First published in 1972, <i>Roadside Picnic</i> is still widely regarded as one of the greatest science fiction novels, despite the fact that it has been out of print in the United States for almost thirty years.]]></book_description>
    <book id="331256">
      <num_pages>145</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Arkady Strugatsky</author_name>
    <isbn>0575070536</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Thu, 09 Apr 2026 09:18:38 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Thu, 09 Apr 2026 09:18:38 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.14</average_rating>
    <book_published>1972</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/331256.Roadside_Picnic?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Roadside Picnic" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1173812259l/331256._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Arkady Strugatsky<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.14<br/>
                                      book published: 1972<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/04/09<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8497360166?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 05 Apr 2026 09:34:07 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Blessings</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8497360166?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>198563681</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Moonlight meets Purple Hibiscus in this gay coming-of-age novel from an astonishing young talent, set in post-military Nigeria and culminating in the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act of 2014.<br /><br />Obiefuna has always been the black sheep of his family—sensitive where his father, Anozie, is pragmatic, a dancer where his brother, Ekene, is a natural athlete. But when an intimate connection blossoms between Obiefuna and a boy from a nearby village, happiness is fleeting once his father catches them together and banishes him to boarding school.<br /><br />Obiefuna finds and hides who he truly is as he navigates his new school’s strict hierarchy and unpredictable violence. Back home, his mother Uzoamaka must contend with the absence of her beloved son, her husband’s cryptic reasons for sending him away, and the hard truths that they’ve all been hiding from. As Nigeria teeters on the brink of criminalizing same-sex relationships, Obiefuna’s life, or the life he wants to live, becomes even further out of a reach and more dangerous than ever before.<br /><br />Told from the alternating perspectives of Obiefuna and Uzoamaka, Blessings is an elegant and exquisitely moving story that asks how to live freely in a country that forbids one’s truest self, and the love that can flourish in spite of it all.]]></book_description>
    <book id="198563681">
      <num_pages>288</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Chukwuebuka Ibeh</author_name>
    <isbn>0385550642</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sun, 05 Apr 2026 09:34:07 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sun, 05 Apr 2026 09:34:06 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.13</average_rating>
    <book_published>2024</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/198563681-blessings?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Blessings" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1696973052l/198563681._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Chukwuebuka Ibeh<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.13<br/>
                                      book published: 2024<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/04/05<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8467350734?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Tue, 31 Mar 2026 15:00:55 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Flowers for Algernon</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8467350734?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>18373</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1689071681l/18373._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the powerful, classic story about a man who receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache.</b><br />  <br /> Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ, he has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that researchers hope will increase his intelligence – a procedure that has already been highly successful when tested on a lab mouse named Algernon.<br /><br /> As the treatment takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment appears to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance, until Algernon suddenly deteriorates. Will the same happen to Charlie?]]></book_description>
    <book id="18373">
      <num_pages>311</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Daniel Keyes</author_name>
    <isbn>015603008X</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>3</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Tue, 31 Mar 2026 15:00:55 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Wed, 25 Mar 2026 11:50:28 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves></user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.21</average_rating>
    <book_published>1966</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18373.Flowers_for_Algernon?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Flowers for Algernon" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1689071681l/18373._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Daniel Keyes<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.21<br/>
                                      book published: 1966<br/>
                                      rating: 3<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/03/25<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/03/31<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8484021624?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Tue, 31 Mar 2026 15:00:19 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Slow Gods</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8484021624?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>223296158</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b><i>My name is Mawukana na-Vdnaze, and I am a very poor copy of myself. </i><br /><br /><i>Slow Gods </i>is the galaxy-spanning tale ​of one man's impossible life charted against the fate of humanity amongst the stars—a powerfully imaginative space opera from multi-award-winning author Claire North. </b><br /><br /> In telling my story, there are certain things I should perhaps lie about. I should make myself a hero. Pretend I was not used by strangers and gods, did not leave people behind.<br />  <br /> Here is one out there in deep space, in the pilot's chair, I died. And then, I was reborn. I became something not quite human, something that could speak to the infinite dark. And I vowed to become the scourge of the world that wronged me. <br /><br /> This is the story of the supernova event that burned planets and felled civilizations. This is also the story of the many lives I've lived since I died for the first time.  <br />  <br /> Are you listening? ]]></book_description>
    <book id="223296158">
      <num_pages>438</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Claire North</author_name>
    <isbn>0316586307</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Tue, 31 Mar 2026 15:00:19 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Tue, 31 Mar 2026 15:00:19 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.84</average_rating>
    <book_published>2025</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223296158-slow-gods?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Slow Gods" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1740714031l/223296158._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Claire North<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.84<br/>
                                      book published: 2025<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/03/31<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8161669147?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Thu, 26 Mar 2026 23:17:02 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Half His Age</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8161669147?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>240424526</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>From the #1 <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author of <i>I’m Glad My Mom Died</i> comes a sad, funny, thrilling novel about sex, consumerism, class, desire, loneliness, the internet, rage, intimacy, power, and the (oftentimes misguided) lengths we’ll go to in order to get what we want.</b><br /><br />Waldo is ravenous. Horny. Blunt. Naive. Wise. Impulsive. Lonely. Angry. Forceful. Hurting. Perceptive. Endlessly wanting. And the thing she wants most of all: Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher with the wife and the kid and the mortgage and the bills, with the dead dreams and the atrophied looks and the growing paunch. She doesn’t know why she wants him. Is it his passion? His life experience? The fact that he knows books and films and things that she doesn’t? Or is it purer than that, rooted in their unlikely connection, their kindred spirits, the similar filter with which they each take in the world around them? Or, perhaps, it’s just enough that he sees her when no one else does.<br /><br />Startlingly perceptive, mordantly funny, and keenly poignant, <i>Half His Age</i> is a rich character study of a yearning seventeen-year-old who disregards all obstacles—or attempts to overcome them—in her effort to be seen, to be desired, to be loved.]]></book_description>
    <book id="240424526">
      <num_pages>288</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Jennette McCurdy</author_name>
    <isbn>0593723732</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>3</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Thu, 19 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Thu, 26 Mar 2026 23:17:02 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sat, 20 Dec 2025 13:50:56 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves></user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.20</average_rating>
    <book_published>2026</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/240424526-half-his-age?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Half His Age" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1765907278l/240424526._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Jennette McCurdy<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.20<br/>
                                      book published: 2026<br/>
                                      rating: 3<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/03/19<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/03/26<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3816613366?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Thu, 26 Mar 2026 23:16:53 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>A Thousand Splendid Suns</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3816613366?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>128029</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, the #1 New York Times bestseller A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love. <br /><br />“Just as good, if not better, than Khaled Hosseini’s best-selling first book, The Kite Runner.”—Newsweek<br /><br />New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century<br /><br />Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today.<br /><br />Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival.<br /><br />A stunning accomplishment, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a haunting, heartbreaking, compelling story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love.]]></book_description>
    <book id="128029">
      <num_pages>372</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Khaled Hosseini</author_name>
    <isbn>1594489505</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Thu, 26 Mar 2026 23:16:53 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:29:05 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves><![CDATA[historical-fiction, literary-contemporary-fiction]]></user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.45</average_rating>
    <book_published>2007</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/128029.A_Thousand_Splendid_Suns?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="A Thousand Splendid Suns" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1655336738l/128029._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Khaled Hosseini<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.45<br/>
                                      book published: 2007<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/03/16<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/03/26<br/>
                                      shelves: historical-fiction, literary-contemporary-fiction<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8425041174?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Thu, 26 Mar 2026 23:16:45 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Beach Read</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8425041174?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>52867387</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1589881197l/52867387._SX50_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.<br /><br />They’re polar opposites.<br /><br />In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer's block.<br /><br />Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.<br /><br /><i>A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.<i></i></i>]]></book_description>
    <book id="52867387">
      <num_pages>358</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Emily Henry</author_name>
    <isbn>1984806734</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Mon, 9 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Thu, 26 Mar 2026 23:16:45 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Mon, 09 Mar 2026 20:43:11 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves></user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.95</average_rating>
    <book_published>2020</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52867387-beach-read?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Beach Read" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1589881197l/52867387._SX50_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Emily Henry<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.95<br/>
                                      book published: 2020<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/03/09<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/03/26<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8418161483?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Thu, 26 Mar 2026 23:16:36 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Gold</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8418161483?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>58089773</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1621363655l/58089773._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>A vibrant selection of poems by the great Persian mystic with groundbreaking translations by an American poet of Persian descent.</b><br /><br />Rumi’s poems were meant to induce a sense of ecstatic illumination and liberation in his audience, bringing its members to a condition of serenity, compassion, and oneness with the divine. They remain masterpieces of world literature to which readers in many languages continually return for inspiration and succor, as wellas aesthetic delight. This new translation by Haleh Liza Gafori preserves the intelligence and the drama of the poems, which are as full of individual character as they are of visionary wisdom.]]></book_description>
    <book id="58089773">
      <num_pages>87</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi</author_name>
    <isbn>1681375338</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Sat, 7 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Thu, 26 Mar 2026 23:16:36 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sat, 07 Mar 2026 11:33:01 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves></user_shelves>
    <user_review><![CDATA[My goodness could Rumi write. It’s crazy how a poet from the 13th century could have so many poems that hit me, a 21st century reader, in the heart. There’s so much timeless wisdom and understanding of the human condition in a book written 800 years ago. I favourited many poems with the hopes of rereading them over and over again in the future. <br /><br />- Let Love<br />- Why paint night over a nightless day?<br />- You shattered my cup<br />- Just the other day<br />- Don’t think!<br />- Open your eyes to the four streams<br />- Let’s love each other<br />- I’m not that lion battling an enemy<br />And too many more to name.]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.34</average_rating>
    <book_published>2022</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58089773-gold?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Gold" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1621363655l/58089773._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.34<br/>
                                      book published: 2022<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/03/07<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/03/26<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/>My goodness could Rumi write. It’s crazy how a poet from the 13th century could have so many poems that hit me, a 21st century reader, in the heart. There’s so much timeless wisdom and understanding of the human condition in a book written 800 years ago. I favourited many poems with the hopes of rereading them over and over again in the future. <br /><br />- Let Love<br />- Why paint night over a nightless day?<br />- You shattered my cup<br />- Just the other day<br />- Don’t think!<br />- Open your eyes to the four streams<br />- Let’s love each other<br />- I’m not that lion battling an enemy<br />And too many more to name.<br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5984019115?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Thu, 26 Mar 2026 23:16:20 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine and the Foundations of a Movement]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5984019115?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>25330108</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1447140494l/25330108._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[In these newly collected essays, interviews, and speeches, world-renowned activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world.<br /><br />Reflecting on the importance of black feminism, intersectionality, and prison abolitionism for today's struggles, Davis discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles, from the Black Freedom Movement to the South African anti-Apartheid movement. She highlights connections and analyzes today's struggles against state terror, from Ferguson to Palestine.<br /><br />Facing a world of outrageous injustice, Davis challenges us to imagine and build the movement for human liberation. And in doing so, she reminds us that "Freedom is a constant struggle."]]></book_description>
    <book id="25330108">
      <num_pages>158</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Angela Y. Davis</author_name>
    <isbn>1608465640</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>5</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Thu, 26 Mar 2026 23:16:20 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Fri, 17 Nov 2023 12:01:43 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>non-fiction</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.45</average_rating>
    <book_published>2015</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25330108-freedom-is-a-constant-struggle?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine and the Foundations of a Movement" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1447140494l/25330108._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Angela Y. Davis<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.45<br/>
                                      book published: 2015<br/>
                                      rating: 5<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/02/20<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/03/26<br/>
                                      shelves: non-fiction<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8454653698?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Mar 2026 20:10:40 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Architects of Memory (The Memory War, #1)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8454653698?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>44438351</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1594004135l/44438351._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Terminally ill salvage pilot Ash Jackson lost everything in the war with the alien Vai, but she'll be damned if she loses her future. Her plan: to buy, beg, or lie her way out of corporate indenture and find a cure.<br /><br />When her crew salvages a genocidal weapon from a ravaged starship above a dead colony, Ash uncovers a conspiracy of corporate intrigue and betrayal that threatens to turn her into a living weapon.]]></book_description>
    <book id="44438351">
      <num_pages>336</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Karen Osborne</author_name>
    <isbn>1250215471</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Mar 2026 20:10:40 -0700]]></user_date_added>
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    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.50</average_rating>
    <book_published>2020</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44438351-architects-of-memory?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Architects of Memory (The Memory War, #1)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1594004135l/44438351._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Karen Osborne<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.50<br/>
                                      book published: 2020<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/03/20<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8454653457?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Mar 2026 20:10:33 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Whispers of the Storm (Song of the Damned, #1)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8454653457?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>222260301</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>REDLIN OF THE WOLVES</b><br /><b>VANGUARD, LEGEND, ASSASSIN, REAPER</b><br /><b>
  <i>Listen to my story</i>
</b><br />I wasn't always the monster they see me as. Half of the songs they sing are stories of my grandeur. The other half are tales of my misdeeds.<br />The sad truth is that they're all true.<br />So, listen to my tale and learn why it all happened. Learn the reason for the war, the reason for all the death.<br />Listen to my tale and listen well. I won't be alive long enough to tell it again.<br /><br /><b>A moody, banter-laced, violent, and poetic framed story - Z.B. Steele presents <i>Whispers of the Storm, </i>book one of <i>Song of the Damned. </i></b>]]></book_description>
    <book id="222260301">
      <num_pages>402</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Z.B. Steele</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Mar 2026 20:10:33 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Mar 2026 20:10:32 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.26</average_rating>
    <book_published></book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222260301-whispers-of-the-storm?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Whispers of the Storm (Song of the Damned, #1)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1779478244l/222260301._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Z.B. Steele<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.26<br/>
                                      book published: <br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/03/20<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8454651212?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Mar 2026 20:09:22 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Daughter of the Forest  (Sevenwaters, #1)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8454651212?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>13928</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1343589988l/13928._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Lovely Sorcha is the seventh child and only daughter of Lord Colum of Sevenwaters. Bereft of a mother, she is comforted by her six brothers who love and protect her. Sorcha is the light in their lives: they are determined that she know only contentment.<br /><br />But Sorcha's joy is shattered when her father is bewitched by his new wife, an evil enchantress who binds her brothers with a terrible spell, a spell which only Sorcha can lift—by staying silent. If she speaks before she completes the quest set to her by the Fair Folk and their queen, the Lady of the Forest, she will lose her brothers forever.<br /><br />When Sorcha is kidnapped by the enemies of Sevenwaters and taken to a foreign land, she is torn between the desire to save her beloved brothers, and a love that comes only once. Sorcha despairs at ever being able to complete her task, but the magic of the Fair Folk knows no boundaries, and love is the strongest magic of them all...]]></book_description>
    <book id="13928">
      <num_pages>554</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Juliet Marillier</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Mar 2026 20:09:22 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Mar 2026 20:09:21 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.27</average_rating>
    <book_published>1999</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13928.Daughter_of_the_Forest?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Daughter of the Forest  (Sevenwaters, #1)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1343589988l/13928._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Juliet Marillier<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.27<br/>
                                      book published: 1999<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/03/20<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8454649068?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Mar 2026 20:08:14 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Your Blood and Bones</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8454649068?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>195744902</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1691463596l/195744902._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>
  <i>Kill the monsters when they’re found.<br /><br />No matter who they used to be.</i>
</b><br /><br />The girl with secret feathers in her skin and strange bones jutting out beneath her clothes is resigned to her fate. Her deformities mark her a monster and the stories say monsters must die.<br /><br />When her family finds out and turns on her, a village boy saves her and leads her on a frantic escape. The girl believes her death has merely been delayed—until he mentions a cure.<br /><br />With the world against them and the monstrous change progressing, they must cross water, forest, and field to chase the rumor that fuels their desperate hope. But is hope enough to keep them going?]]></book_description>
    <book id="195744902">
      <num_pages>168</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>J. Patricia Anderson</author_name>
    <isbn>1778288162</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Mar 2026 20:08:14 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Mar 2026 20:08:14 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.87</average_rating>
    <book_published></book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/195744902-your-blood-and-bones?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Your Blood and Bones" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1691463596l/195744902._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: J. Patricia Anderson<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.87<br/>
                                      book published: <br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/03/20<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8454646625?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Mar 2026 20:07:07 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[The Book of Fallen Leaves (The Autumn Empire, #1)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8454646625?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>238142647</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1765909454l/238142647._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_large_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1765909454l/238142647._SY475_.jpg]]></book_large_image_url>
    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>The fates of gods and samurai converge in this Japanese-myth inspired epic fantasy masterpiece from debut author A. S. Tamaki. </b><br /> <br /> Sen Hoshiakari, the exiled son of a traitor, is determined to restore his decimated clan to their former power at any cost. But when his path collides with that of Rui, a lowborn woman who once saved his life, he discovers his family ambitions may have paid a darker price than he ever knew. And as Onryō—vengeful demons—rise throughout the land again, demanding retribution for their slaughtered souls, he’s torn between loyalty to the family he’s searched for his entire life and the love of his closest friend.<br /> <br /> Only now, his reunited family and their allied forces will stop at nothing in a blossoming civil war against the empire they once served, and the more they kill, the worse the demons will become. To save their world, Sen and Rui must join this conflict and find a way to forge peace—even if it means being cursed by the very gods who once protected them.]]></book_description>
    <book id="238142647">
      <num_pages>437</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>A.S. Tamaki</author_name>
    <isbn>0316588083</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Mar 2026 20:07:07 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Mar 2026 20:07:06 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.41</average_rating>
    <book_published>2026</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/238142647-the-book-of-fallen-leaves?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="The Book of Fallen Leaves (The Autumn Empire, #1)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1765909454l/238142647._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: A.S. Tamaki<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.41<br/>
                                      book published: 2026<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/03/20<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4245068341?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Thu, 19 Mar 2026 10:08:56 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Star Eater</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4245068341?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>55077680</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1599778721l/55077680._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>All martyrdoms are difficult.</b><br /><br />Elfreda Raughn will avoid pregnancy if it kills her, and one way or another, it will kill her. Though she’s able to stomach her gruesome day-to-day duties, the reality of preserving the Sisterhood of Aytrium’s magical bloodline horrifies her. She wants out, whatever the cost.<br /><br />So when a shadowy cabal approaches Elfreda with an offer of escape, she leaps at the opportunity. As their spy, she gains access to the highest reaches of the Sisterhood, and enters a glittering world of opulent parties, subtle deceptions, and unexpected bloodshed.<br /><br />A phantasmagorical indictment of hereditary power, Star Eater takes readers deep into a perilous and uncanny world where even the most powerful women are forced to choose what sacrifices they will make, so that they might have any choice at all.]]></book_description>
    <book id="55077680">
      <num_pages>448</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Kerstin  Hall</author_name>
    <isbn>1250625319</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Tue, 23 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Thu, 19 Mar 2026 10:08:56 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sat, 18 Sep 2021 15:41:39 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves><![CDATA[horror, science-fiction, did-not-finish]]></user_shelves>
    <user_review><![CDATA[DNF. Might come back to, who knows, but I wasn't too interested in this.]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.51</average_rating>
    <book_published>2021</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55077680-star-eater?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Star Eater" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1599778721l/55077680._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Kerstin  Hall<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.51<br/>
                                      book published: 2021<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: 2021/11/23<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/03/19<br/>
                                      shelves: horror, science-fiction, did-not-finish<br/>
                                      review: <br/>DNF. Might come back to, who knows, but I wasn't too interested in this.<br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4042453144?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Thu, 19 Mar 2026 10:08:19 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>The Martian</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4042453144?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>18007564</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1413706054l/18007564._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. <br /><br />Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.<br /><br />After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. <br /><br />Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error” are much more likely to kill him first. <br /><br />But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills — and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit — he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?<br /><br />]]></book_description>
    <book id="18007564">
      <num_pages>369</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Andy Weir</author_name>
    <isbn>0804139024</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Thu, 17 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Thu, 19 Mar 2026 10:08:19 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sat, 05 Jun 2021 11:01:15 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves><![CDATA[science-fiction, adult, did-not-finish]]></user_shelves>
    <user_review><![CDATA[Unfortunately as I was reading I slowly lost interest, then my loan expired. That’s fine, I do plan on getting this book again.]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.41</average_rating>
    <book_published>2011</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18007564-the-martian?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="The Martian" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1413706054l/18007564._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Andy Weir<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.41<br/>
                                      book published: 2011<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: 2021/06/17<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/03/19<br/>
                                      shelves: science-fiction, adult, did-not-finish<br/>
                                      review: <br/>Unfortunately as I was reading I slowly lost interest, then my loan expired. That’s fine, I do plan on getting this book again.<br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3401042582?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Thu, 19 Mar 2026 10:07:34 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3401042582?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>58045772</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1621042066l/58045772._SX50_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_large_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1621042066l/58045772._SX318_.jpg]]></book_large_image_url>
    <book_description><![CDATA[The emperor's reign has lasted for decades, his mastery of bone shard magic powering the animal-like constructs that maintain law and order. But now his rule is failing, and revolution is sweeping across the Empire's many islands.<br /><br />Lin is the emperor's daughter and spends her days trapped in a palace of locked doors and dark secrets. When her father refuses to recognise her as heir to the throne, she vows to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden art of bone shard magic.<br /><br />Yet such power carries a great cost, and when the revolution reaches the gates of the palace, Lin must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her birthright - and save her people.]]></book_description>
    <book id="58045772">
      <num_pages></num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Andrea Stewart</author_name>
    <isbn>1549107348</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Mon, 23 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Thu, 19 Mar 2026 10:07:34 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Fri, 19 Jun 2020 18:27:00 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves><![CDATA[fantasy, adult, did-not-finish]]></user_shelves>
    <user_review><![CDATA[Unfortunately this is a DNF, but I will be coming back to it later if everything goes to plan.]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.73</average_rating>
    <book_published>2020</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58045772-the-bone-shard-daughter?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1621042066l/58045772._SX50_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Andrea Stewart<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.73<br/>
                                      book published: 2020<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: 2021/08/23<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/03/19<br/>
                                      shelves: fantasy, adult, did-not-finish<br/>
                                      review: <br/>Unfortunately this is a DNF, but I will be coming back to it later if everything goes to plan.<br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3010550541?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Thu, 19 Mar 2026 10:07:23 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Dracula</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3010550541?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>17245</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387151694l/17245._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
    <book_small_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387151694l/17245._SY75_.jpg]]></book_small_image_url>
    <book_medium_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387151694l/17245._SY160_.jpg]]></book_medium_image_url>
    <book_large_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387151694l/17245.jpg]]></book_large_image_url>
    <book_description><![CDATA[<i>You can find an alternative cover edition for this ISBN <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33805355-dracula" rel="nofollow noopener">here</a> and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34810834-dracula" rel="nofollow noopener">here</a>.</i><br /><br />When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes a series of horrific discoveries about his client. Soon afterwards, various bizarre incidents unfold in England: an apparently unmanned ship is wrecked off the coast of Whitby; a young woman discovers strange puncture marks on her neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the 'Master' and his imminent arrival.<br /><br />In <i>Dracula</i>, Bram Stoker created one of the great masterpieces of the horror genre, brilliantly evoking a nightmare world of vampires and vampire hunters and also illuminating the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire.<br /><br />This Norton Critical Edition includes a rich selection of background and source materials in three areas: Contexts includes probable inspirations for Dracula in the earlier works of James Malcolm Rymer and Emily Gerard. Also included are a discussion of Stoker's working notes for the novel and "Dracula's Guest," the original opening chapter to Dracula. Reviews and Reactions reprints five early reviews of the novel. "Dramatic and Film Variations" focuses on theater and film adaptations of Dracula, two indications of the novel's unwavering appeal. David J. Skal, Gregory A. Waller, and Nina Auerbach offer their varied perspectives. Checklists of both dramatic and film adaptations are included.<br /><br />Criticism collects seven theoretical interpretations of Dracula by Phyllis A. Roth, Carol A. Senf, Franco Moretti, Christopher Craft, Bram Dijkstra, Stephen D. Arata, and Talia Schaffer.<br /><br />A Chronology and a Selected Bibliography are included.]]></book_description>
    <book id="17245">
      <num_pages>488</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Bram Stoker</author_name>
    <isbn>0393970124</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Mon, 18 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Thu, 19 Mar 2026 10:07:23 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sat, 12 Oct 2019 21:05:16 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves><![CDATA[horror, urban-fantasy, fall-gloomy-weather-tbr, did-not-finish]]></user_shelves>
    <user_review><![CDATA[Dnf at 27%, will return back to it once I have the motivation.]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.03</average_rating>
    <book_published>1897</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17245.Dracula?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Dracula" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1387151694l/17245._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Bram Stoker<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.03<br/>
                                      book published: 1897<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: 2021/10/18<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/03/19<br/>
                                      shelves: horror, urban-fantasy, fall-gloomy-weather-tbr, did-not-finish<br/>
                                      review: <br/>Dnf at 27%, will return back to it once I have the motivation.<br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2475743647?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Thu, 19 Mar 2026 10:07:12 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Falling Kingdoms (Falling Kingdoms, #1)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2475743647?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>12954620</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1337026387l/12954620._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_large_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1337026387l/12954620.jpg]]></book_large_image_url>
    <book_description><![CDATA[In the three kingdoms of Mytica, magic has long been forgotten. And while hard-won peace has reigned for centuries, a deadly unrest now simmers below the surface.<br /><br />As the rulers of each kingdom grapple for power, the lives of their subjects are brutally transformed... and four key players, royals and rebels alike, find their fates forever intertwined. Cleo, Jonas, Lucia, and Magnus are caught in a dizzying world of treacherous betrayals, shocking murders, secret alliances, and even unforeseen love.<br /><br /><i>The only outcome that's certain is that kingdoms will fall. Who will emerge triumphant when all they know has collapsed?<br /><br />It's the eve of war.... Choose your side.</i><br /><br /><b>Princess:</b> Raised in pampered luxury, Cleo must now embark on a rough and treacherous journey into enemy territory in search of magic long thought extinct.<br /><br /><b>Rebel:</b> Jonas, enraged at injustice, lashes out against the forces of oppression that have kept his country cruelly impoverished. To his shock, he finds himself the leader of a people's revolution centuries in the making.<br /><br /><b>Sorceress:</b> Lucia, adopted at birth into the royal family, discovers the truth about her past—and the supernatural legacy she is destined to wield.<br /><br /><b>Heir:</b> Bred for aggression and trained to conquer, firstborn son Magnus begins to realize that the heart can be more lethal than the sword....]]></book_description>
    <book id="12954620">
      <num_pages>412</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Morgan Rhodes</author_name>
    <isbn>1595145842</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>2</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Thu, 19 Mar 2026 10:07:12 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Mon, 30 Jul 2018 09:16:43 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>did-not-finish</user_shelves>
    <user_review><![CDATA[Honestly I don’t remember what happened in this book.]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.78</average_rating>
    <book_published>2012</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12954620-falling-kingdoms?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Falling Kingdoms (Falling Kingdoms, #1)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1337026387l/12954620._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Morgan Rhodes<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.78<br/>
                                      book published: 2012<br/>
                                      rating: 2<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/03/19<br/>
                                      shelves: did-not-finish<br/>
                                      review: <br/>Honestly I don’t remember what happened in this book.<br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2638161514?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 11 Mar 2026 22:43:29 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2638161514?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>15839976</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1461354651l/15839976._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. Yet he toils willingly, trusting that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children.<br /><br />But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and lush wilds spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.<br /><br />Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity’s overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society’s ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies . . . even if it means he has to become one of them to do so.]]></book_description>
    <book id="15839976">
      <num_pages>382</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Pierce Brown</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>3</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Wed, 27 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Wed, 11 Mar 2026 22:43:29 -0700]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Tue, 25 Dec 2018 10:17:21 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves><![CDATA[science-fiction, wanna-be-friends-with-protagonist, adult, favorites]]></user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.25</average_rating>
    <book_published>2014</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15839976-red-rising?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Red Rising (Red Rising Saga, #1)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1461354651l/15839976._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Pierce Brown<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.25<br/>
                                      book published: 2014<br/>
                                      rating: 3<br/>
                                      read at: 2019/11/27<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/03/11<br/>
                                      shelves: science-fiction, wanna-be-friends-with-protagonist, adult, favorites<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5916151359?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sat, 07 Mar 2026 10:40:45 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5916151359?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>61714633</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1659407155l/61714633._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[On January 28, 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s Ship the Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While the Wager had been chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon known as “the prize of all the oceans,” it had wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The men, after being marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing nearly 3,000 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.<br /><br />But then ... six months later, another, even more decrepit craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways, and they told a very different story. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes – they were mutineers. The first group responded with countercharges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous senior officer and his henchmen. It became clear that while stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death—for whomever the court found guilty could hang.<br /><br />The Wager is a grand tale of human behavior at the extremes told by one of our greatest nonfiction writers. Grann’s recreation of the hidden world on a British warship rivals the work of Patrick O’Brian, his portrayal of the castaways’ desperate straits stands up to the classics of survival writing such as The Endurance, and his account of the court martial has the savvy of a Scott Turow thriller. As always with Grann’s work, the incredible twists of the narrative hold the reader spellbound.]]></book_description>
    <book id="61714633">
      <num_pages>329</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>David Grann</author_name>
    <isbn>0385534264</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>3</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Sat, 7 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sat, 07 Mar 2026 10:40:45 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Tue, 17 Oct 2023 20:19:49 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>non-fiction</user_shelves>
    <user_review><![CDATA[A good book. The story was written very well and was interesting overall. I wasn’t entirely engaged with it but it’s still a fine read.]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.13</average_rating>
    <book_published>2023</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61714633-the-wager?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1659407155l/61714633._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: David Grann<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.13<br/>
                                      book published: 2023<br/>
                                      rating: 3<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/03/07<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/03/07<br/>
                                      shelves: non-fiction<br/>
                                      review: <br/>A good book. The story was written very well and was interesting overall. I wasn’t entirely engaged with it but it’s still a fine read.<br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8380309781?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sat, 21 Feb 2026 21:38:30 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[A Black Queer History of the United States (ReVisioning History)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8380309781?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>231681148</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1746563765l/231681148._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>The first-ever Black history to center queer voices, this landmark study traces the lives of LGBTQ+ Black Americans from slavery to present day</b><br /><br /><b>Gender and sexual expression have always been part of the Black freedom struggle</b><br /><br />In this latest book in Beacon’s award-winning <i>ReVisioning History </i>series, Professors C. Riley Snorton and Darius Bost unearth the often overlooked history of the Black queer community in the United States.<br /><br />Arguing that both gender and sexual expression have been an intimate and intricate part of Black freedom struggle, Snorton and Bost present historical contributions of Black queer, trans, and gender non-conforming Americans from slavery to the present day to highlight how the fight against racial injustice has always been linked to that of sexual and gender justice.<br /><br />Interweaving stories of queer and trans figures such as:<br /><br />• Private William Cathay/Cathay Williams, born female but enlisted in the Army as a man in the mid-1860s <br /><br />• Josephine Baker, internationally known dancer and entertainer of the early 20th century who was also openly bisexual <br /><br />• Bayard Rustin, prominent Civil Rights activist whose well known homosexuality was viewed as a potential threat to the movement <br /><br />• Amanda Milan, a black trans woman whose murder in 2000 unified the trans people of color community, <br /><br />this book includes a deep dive into the marginalization, unjust criminalization, and government legislation of Black queer and trans existence. It also shows how Black Americans have played an integral role in the modern LGBTQ rights movement, countering narratives that have predominantly focused on white Americans.<br /><br />Through storytelling and other narratives, Snorton and Bost show how the Black queer community has always existed, regardless of the attempts to stamp it out, and how those in it continue to fight for their rightful place in the world.]]></book_description>
    <book id="231681148">
      <num_pages>232</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>C. Riley Snorton</author_name>
    <isbn>0807008559</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sat, 21 Feb 2026 21:38:30 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sat, 21 Feb 2026 21:38:30 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.04</average_rating>
    <book_published>2026</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/231681148-a-black-queer-history-of-the-united-states?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="A Black Queer History of the United States (ReVisioning History)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1746563765l/231681148._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: C. Riley Snorton<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.04<br/>
                                      book published: 2026<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/02/21<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8307183442?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Feb 2026 18:56:38 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[A Faint Cold Fear (Grant County, #3)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8307183442?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>21721</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<p>The third pulse-pounding novel in the Grant County series from <i>New York Times </i>bestselling author Karin Slaughter.</p><p>Sara Linton, medical examiner in the small town of Heartsdale, Georgia, is called out to an apparent suicide on the local college campus. The mutilated body provides little in the way of clues -- and the college authorities are eager to avoid a scandal -- but for Sara and police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, things don't add up.</p><p>Two more suspicious suicides follow, and a young woman is brutally attacked. For Sara, the violence strikes far too close to home. And as Jeffrey pursues the sadistic killer, he discovers that ex-police detective Lena Adams, now a security guard on campus, may be in possession of crucial information. But, bruised and angered by her expulsion from the force, Lena seems to be barely capable of protecting herself, let alone saving the next victim...</p>]]></book_description>
    <book id="21721">
      <num_pages>422</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Karin Slaughter</author_name>
    <isbn>0060534052</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>3</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Feb 2026 18:56:38 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Tue, 27 Jan 2026 19:02:43 -0800]]></user_date_created>
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    <average_rating>4.02</average_rating>
    <book_published>2003</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21721.A_Faint_Cold_Fear?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="A Faint Cold Fear (Grant County, #3)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1394126332l/21721._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Karin Slaughter<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.02<br/>
                                      book published: 2003<br/>
                                      rating: 3<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/01/27<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/02/20<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6073879584?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Feb 2026 18:56:24 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>All the Sinners Bleed</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6073879584?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>61884832</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>A Black sheriff. A serial killer. A small town ready to combust.</b><br /><br />Titus Crown is the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. In recent decades, Charon has had only two murders. After years of working as an FBI agent, Titus knows better than anyone that while his hometown might seem like a land of moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, secrets always fester under the surface.<br /><br />Then a year to the day after Titus’s election, a school teacher is killed by a former student and the student is fatally shot by Titus’s deputies. Those festering secrets are now out in the open and ready to tear the town apart.<br /><br />As Titus investigates the shootings, he unearths terrible crimes and a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight, haunting the dirt lanes and woodland clearings of Charon. With the killer’s possible connections to a local church and the town’s harrowing history weighing on him, Titus projects confidence about closing the case while concealing a painful secret from his own past. At the same time, he also has to contend with a far-right group that wants to hold a parade in celebration of the town’s Confederate history.<br /><br />Powerful and unforgettable, <i>All the Sinners Bleed</i> confirms S. A. Cosby as “one of the most muscular, distinctive, grab-you-by-both-ears voices in American crime fiction” (<i>The Washington Post</i>).]]></book_description>
    <book id="61884832">
      <num_pages>338</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>S.A. Cosby</author_name>
    <isbn>1250831911</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Sun, 8 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
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    <user_shelves><![CDATA[thriller-mystery-crime-fiction]]></user_shelves>
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    <average_rating>4.16</average_rating>
    <book_published>2023</book_published>
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      <![CDATA[
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                                      author: S.A. Cosby<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.16<br/>
                                      book published: 2023<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/02/08<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/02/20<br/>
                                      shelves: thriller-mystery-crime-fiction<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8270062888?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Feb 2026 18:56:17 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>Song of Solomon</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8270062888?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>11334</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<i>Previous cover edition of ISBN 9781400033423</i><br /><br />Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world.]]></book_description>
    <book id="11334">
      <num_pages>338</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Toni Morrison</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>3</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Fri, 16 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
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    <average_rating>4.16</average_rating>
    <book_published>1977</book_published>
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      <![CDATA[
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                                      author: Toni Morrison<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.16<br/>
                                      book published: 1977<br/>
                                      rating: 3<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/01/16<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/02/20<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8177585768?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Feb 2026 18:56:12 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>The Song of Achilles</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8177585768?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>13623848</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<i>Alternate cover edition of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59062169-the-song-of-achilles" rel="nofollow noopener">ISBN 9780062060624</a>.</i><br /><br />Achilles, "the best of all the Greeks," son of the cruel sea goddess Thetis and the legendary king Peleus, is strong, swift, and beautiful, irresistible to all who meet him. Patroclus is an awkward young prince, exiled from his homeland after an act of shocking violence. Brought together by chance, they forge an inseparable bond, despite risking the gods' wrath.<br /><br />They are trained by the centaur Chiron in the arts of war and medicine, but when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, all the heroes of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the cruel Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice.]]></book_description>
    <book id="13623848">
      <num_pages>408</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Madeline Miller</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Fri, 26 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Feb 2026 18:56:12 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Fri, 26 Dec 2025 12:07:29 -0800]]></user_date_created>
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    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.28</average_rating>
    <book_published>2011</book_published>
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      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13623848-the-song-of-achilles?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="The Song of Achilles" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1357177533l/13623848._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Madeline Miller<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.28<br/>
                                      book published: 2011<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: 2025/12/26<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/02/20<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7134890996?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Feb 2026 18:56:09 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>All About Love: New Visions</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7134890996?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>17607</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<em>All About Love</em> offers radical new ways to think about love by showing its interconnectedness in our private and public lives. In eleven concise chapters, hooks explains how our everyday notions of what it means to give and receive love often fail us, and how these ideals are established in early childhood. She offers a rethinking of self-love (without narcissism) that will bring peace and compassion to our personal and professional lives, and asserts the place of love to end struggles between individuals, in communities, and among societies. Moving from the cultural to the intimate, hooks notes the ties between love and loss and challenges the prevailing notion that romantic love is the most important love of all.<br /><br />Visionary and original, hooks shows how love heals the wounds we bear as individuals and as a nation, for it is the cornerstone of compassion and forgiveness and holds the power to overcome shame.<br /><br />For readers who have found ongoing delight and wisdom in bell hooks's life and work, and for those who are just now discovering her, <em>All About Love</em> is essential reading and a brilliant book that will change how we think about love, our culture-and one another.]]></book_description>
    <book id="17607">
      <num_pages>240</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>bell hooks</author_name>
    <isbn>0688168442</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>3</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Sat, 20 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Fri, 20 Feb 2026 18:56:09 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:30:31 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves></user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.02</average_rating>
    <book_published>1999</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17607.All_About_Love?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="All About Love: New Visions" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1757107647l/17607._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: bell hooks<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.02<br/>
                                      book published: 1999<br/>
                                      rating: 3<br/>
                                      read at: 2025/12/20<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/02/20<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8361454354?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 15 Feb 2026 12:41:12 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>They Never Learn</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8361454354?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>124948406</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>From the author of the “raw, ingenious, and utterly fearless” (Wendy Walker, USA TODAY bestselling author) <i>Temper</i> comes a dynamic psychological thriller about two women who give bad men exactly what they deserve.</b><br /><br />Scarlett Clark is an exceptional English professor. But she’s even better at getting away with murder.<br /><br />Every year, she searches for the worst man at Gorman University and plots his well-deserved demise. Thanks to her meticulous planning, she’s avoided drawing attention to herself—but as she’s preparing for her biggest kill yet, the school starts probing into the growing body count on campus. Determined to keep her enemies close, Scarlett insinuates herself into the investigation and charms the woman in charge, Dr. Mina Pierce. Everything’s going according to her master plan…until she loses control with her latest victim, putting her secret life at risk of exposure.<br /><br />Meanwhile, Gorman student Carly Schiller is just trying to survive her freshman year. Finally free of her emotionally abusive father, all Carly wants is to focus on her studies and fade into the background. Her new roommate has other ideas. Allison Hadley is cool and confident—everything Carly wishes she could be—and the two girls quickly form an intense friendship. So when Allison is sexually assaulted at a party, Carly becomes obsessed with making the attacker pay...and turning her fantasies about revenge into a reality.<br /><br />Featuring Layne Fargo’s trademark “propulsive writing style” <i>(Kirkus Reviews)</i> and “sinister, of the moment” <i>(Chicago Review of Books)</i> suspense, <i>They Never Learn</i> is a feminist serial killer story perfect for fans of <i>Killing Eve</i> and Chelsea Cain.]]></book_description>
    <book id="124948406">
      <num_pages>349</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Layne Fargo</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
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    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
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    <average_rating>3.82</average_rating>
    <book_published>2020</book_published>
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                                      author: Layne Fargo<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.82<br/>
                                      book published: 2020<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/02/15<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8361408051?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 15 Feb 2026 12:25:45 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[American Reich: A Murder in Orange County, Neo-Nazis, and a New Age of Hate]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8361408051?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>223296203</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>From the Pulitzer-winning author of the <i>New York Times</i> bestseller <i>The Nazis Next Door</i>, a deeply reported exploration of the violent resurgence of hatred and white supremacy through the lens of Orange County, California—“ground zero” for racial extremism—and the story of one brutal murder there that revealed the deep roots of violent bigotry as a bellwether for the country.</b><br /><br />One night in early 2018, while he was home from college, an Ivy League student named Blaze Bernstein snuck out of his parents’ house in Orange County. Waiting for him in a car outside was an old high-school classmate: Sam Woodward, someone who Blaze mostly remembered as a brooding, bigoted loner. But that night, after months of flirtatious messaging, Sam had succeeded in coaxing Blaze—a gay, Jewish sophomore at UPenn—out for a rendezvous. No one would ever see him alive again.<br /><br />In <i>American Reich</i>, veteran investigative journalist Eric Lichtblau uses the story of Blaze’s life and death to shine a light on the epidemic of hate in Southern California and, increasingly, the nation as a whole. Orange County has long been a bastion of the ultra-right: carved out of farmland as a haven for wealthy whites fleeing the diversifying metropolis to the north, it was the birthplace of the far-right John Birch Society, a hub for neo-Nazi recruitment, and a powerful springboard for race-baiting Republican politicians including Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. But in the years leading up to Blaze’s disappearance, Orange County was changing: like the country as a whole, it was rapidly diversifying, to the outrage of many of its white residents. No one was more opposed to the changes than America’s resurgent neo-Nazi groups, one of which had recently gained a new member: Sam Woodward.<br /><br />Revealing how Orange County has exported racial hatred to the rest of the country and the world, <i>American Reich</i> weaves this tragic tale together with stories from across the nation, showing what this haunted place and the colliding paths of two of its residents reveal about America's fractured soul and our hope for healing.]]></book_description>
    <book id="223296203">
      <num_pages>352</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Eric Lichtblau</author_name>
    <isbn>0316564710</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
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    <average_rating>4.09</average_rating>
    <book_published>2026</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
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                                      author: Eric Lichtblau<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.09<br/>
                                      book published: 2026<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/02/15<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8349272425?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Tue, 10 Feb 2026 19:51:52 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[We Are All Guilty Here (North Falls, #1)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8349272425?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>221544394</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[The first thrilling mystery in the new North Falls series from Karin Slaughter, New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Girls and the Will Trent Series. Welcome to North Falls-a small town where everyone knows everyone. Or so they think. Until the night of the fireworks. When two teenage girls vanish, and the town ignites. For Officer Emmy Clifton, it's personal. She turned away when her best friend's daughter needed help-and now she must bring her home. But as Emmy combs through the puzzle the girls left behind, she realizes she never really knew them. Nobody did. Every teenage girl has secrets. But who would kill for them? And what else is the town hiding?]]></book_description>
    <book id="221544394">
      <num_pages>439</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Karin Slaughter</author_name>
    <isbn>0063336774</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
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    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.12</average_rating>
    <book_published>2025</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/221544394-we-are-all-guilty-here?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="We Are All Guilty Here (North Falls, #1)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1776449135l/221544394._SX50_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Karin Slaughter<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.12<br/>
                                      book published: 2025<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/02/10<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8329243106?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Tue, 03 Feb 2026 17:29:26 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8329243106?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>43152137</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[It’s 1993 and Paul Polydoris tends bar at the only gay club in a university town thrumming with politics and partying. He studies queer theory, has a dyke best friend, makes zines, and is a flâneur with a rich dating life. But Paul’s also got a secret: he’s a shapeshifter. Oscillating wildly from Riot Grrrl to leather cub, Women’s Studies major to trade, Paul transforms his body at will in a series of adventures that take him from Iowa City to Boystown to Provincetown and finally to San Francisco – a journey through the deep queer archives of struggle and pleasure. Andrea Lawlor’s debut novel offers a speculative history of early 90s identity politics during the heyday of ACT UP and Queer Nation.<br /><br /><em>Paul Takes the Form of A Mortal Girl</em> is a riotous, razor-sharp bildungsroman whose hero/ine wends his way through a world gutted by loss, pulsing with music, and opening into an array of intimacy and connections.]]></book_description>
    <book id="43152137">
      <num_pages>320</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Andrea Lawlor</author_name>
    <isbn>1529007666</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Tue, 03 Feb 2026 17:29:26 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Tue, 03 Feb 2026 17:29:25 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.75</average_rating>
    <book_published>2017</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43152137-paul-takes-the-form-of-a-mortal-girl?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1544018804l/43152137._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Andrea Lawlor<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.75<br/>
                                      book published: 2017<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/02/03<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8323374818?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 01 Feb 2026 20:28:09 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>Good Friends</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8323374818?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>247314923</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>“We don’t get just one love in our life, but you never forget your first.”</b><br /><br />13-year-old Andy Olson had almost entirely resigned himself to ambling aimlessly through his lackluster life in the small, sleepy town of Jasper, Nebraska until his first day of eighth grade, when cheery new kid Owen Ackerman spontaneously slid into the seat next to him in their first period health class and ruined everything.<br /><br />Owen is everything Andy’s not - unmissably attractive, immediately outgoing, and almost annoyingly honest - but somehow, bound by their mutual loneliness, the two strike up an instant friendship nevertheless. And, despite his best efforts to fight it, Owen subsequently becomes the object of Andy’s affection as well.<br /><br />Andy’s struggles with his sexuality and identity are nothing new to him, but when Owen arrives, any chance he has of controlling them anymore goes out the window. And even though the two drift in and out of each other’s lives over the decade that follows their first meeting, they always find their way back to one another, consistently blurring the line between friendship and “something more” as they age - despite all the dangers such a “something” would encounter in their small town and the rapidly changing world around them.]]></book_description>
    <book id="247314923">
      <num_pages>427</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Zoë Rose Bryant</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
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    <average_rating>4.44</average_rating>
    <book_published></book_published>
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      <![CDATA[
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                                      author: Zoë Rose Bryant<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.44<br/>
                                      book published: <br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/02/01<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3444420967?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Mon, 26 Jan 2026 20:35:40 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[This Is How You Lose the Time War]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3444420967?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>43352954</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: <i>Burn before reading.</i> Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.<br /><br />Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.]]></book_description>
    <book id="43352954">
      <num_pages>209</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Amal El-Mohtar</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Tue, 16 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Mon, 26 Jan 2026 20:35:40 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Wed, 15 Jul 2020 11:40:40 -0700]]></user_date_created>
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    <user_review><![CDATA[I will sit with my rating for a couple days, but I quite enjoyed this. It’ll probably end up as a 3.5 or 4 stars. The romance was as intense, passionate, and melodramatic as I like my romances to be, and the world-building was stellar. The universe and story Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone created was so rich. This book was truly sci-fi in every sense of the world: time-travelling, space exploration, butterfly effects, and something else that I won’t spoil. The writing is incredibly gorgeous, filled with such exquisite, exceptional detail, metaphor, and lyricism. The purple prose does sometimes get too purple (by the end I was a bit fatigued) but it’s still fantastic writing. The audiobook narrators elevate the text even more, as audiobook narrators should, though they did sound very similar to one another. <br /><br />That leads into my main criticisms of the book: 1) the characters are nearly indistinguishable from each other and 2) the world-building was a bit confusing. Red and Blue’s prose are stunning, yes, but they are extremely similar to one another, which makes it a bit hard to parse out which agent is talking. This leads to a bit of confusion sometimes when distinguishing which characters are which and who is on which side of this war. Moreover, while the world is so expansive and interesting, the constant time-travelling, terms, and vague explanations of motivations made it so it was difficult to really grasp any kind of setting these characters were in. I can definitely see that these authors have such a wonderful imagination, but a bit of elaboration would’ve helped, though it would have felt out of place in a story where 2 very capable agents wouldn’t need to explain to one another different facets about their world. Overall, this was a really good book and I’d recommend reading it if you’re interested. ]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.82</average_rating>
    <book_published>2019</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43352954-this-is-how-you-lose-the-time-war?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="This Is How You Lose the Time War" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1759084233l/43352954._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Amal El-Mohtar<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.82<br/>
                                      book published: 2019<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: 2025/12/16<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/01/26<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/>I will sit with my rating for a couple days, but I quite enjoyed this. It’ll probably end up as a 3.5 or 4 stars. The romance was as intense, passionate, and melodramatic as I like my romances to be, and the world-building was stellar. The universe and story Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone created was so rich. This book was truly sci-fi in every sense of the world: time-travelling, space exploration, butterfly effects, and something else that I won’t spoil. The writing is incredibly gorgeous, filled with such exquisite, exceptional detail, metaphor, and lyricism. The purple prose does sometimes get too purple (by the end I was a bit fatigued) but it’s still fantastic writing. The audiobook narrators elevate the text even more, as audiobook narrators should, though they did sound very similar to one another. <br /><br />That leads into my main criticisms of the book: 1) the characters are nearly indistinguishable from each other and 2) the world-building was a bit confusing. Red and Blue’s prose are stunning, yes, but they are extremely similar to one another, which makes it a bit hard to parse out which agent is talking. This leads to a bit of confusion sometimes when distinguishing which characters are which and who is on which side of this war. Moreover, while the world is so expansive and interesting, the constant time-travelling, terms, and vague explanations of motivations made it so it was difficult to really grasp any kind of setting these characters were in. I can definitely see that these authors have such a wonderful imagination, but a bit of elaboration would’ve helped, though it would have felt out of place in a story where 2 very capable agents wouldn’t need to explain to one another different facets about their world. Overall, this was a really good book and I’d recommend reading it if you’re interested. <br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6466067386?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Mon, 26 Jan 2026 20:35:35 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>Katabasis</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6466067386?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>210223811</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>Dante’s <i>Inferno</i> meets Susanna Clarke’s <i>Piranesi</i> in this all-new dark academia fantasy from R. F. Kuang, the #1 <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author of <i>Babel</i> and <i>Yellowface</i>, in which two graduate students must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul—perhaps at the cost of their own.<br /><br />Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek:<br /><br /><i>The story of a hero’s descent to the underworld.</i></b><br /><br />Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality: her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world.<br /><br />That is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.<br /><br />Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams….<br /><br />Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the very same conclusion.<br /><br />With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, enough chalk to draw the Pentagrams necessary for their spells, and the burning desire to make all the academic trauma mean anything, they set off across Hell to save a man they don’t even like.<br /><br />But Hell is not like the storybooks say, Magick isn’t always the answer, and there’s something in Alice and Peter’s past that could forge them into the perfect allies…or lead to their doom.]]></book_description>
    <book id="210223811">
      <num_pages>559</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>R.F. Kuang</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Sun, 26 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Mon, 26 Jan 2026 20:35:35 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Mon, 29 Apr 2024 07:28:57 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves></user_shelves>
    <user_review><![CDATA[After the magnificence of the Poppy War trilogy and Babel, R.F Kuang has become one of the authors where I'm interested in anything that she writes.<br /><br /><br />Update 26/10/2025: Review to come but this was quite the journey!]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.69</average_rating>
    <book_published>2025</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/210223811-katabasis?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Katabasis" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1762103964l/210223811._SX50_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: R.F. Kuang<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.69<br/>
                                      book published: 2025<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: 2025/10/26<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/01/26<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/>After the magnificence of the Poppy War trilogy and Babel, R.F Kuang has become one of the authors where I'm interested in anything that she writes.<br /><br /><br />Update 26/10/2025: Review to come but this was quite the journey!<br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Mon, 26 Jan 2026 16:52:38 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>It Should Have Been You</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8303427746?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>215998781</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>“Andrea Mara is fantastic. If you love short chapters and cliffhangers and nonstop suspense, this is for you!” —Freida McFadden, #1 <i>New York Times </i>bestseller of <i>The Housemaid</i><br /> <br />A gripping new thriller from Andrea Mara, the #1 international bestselling author of ALL HER FAULT, now streaming on Peacock <br /> <br />Your neighbors have secrets. How far would they go to keep them?</b><br /><br />You press send and your message disappears. Full of secrets about your neighbors, it’s meant for your sister. But it doesn’t reach her – it goes to the entire local community WhatsApp group instead.<br /><br />As rumor spreads like wildfire through the picture-perfect neighborhood, you convince yourself that people will move on, that this will quickly be forgotten. But then you receive the first death threat.<br /><br />The next day, a woman has been murdered. And what’s even more chilling is that she had the same address as you – 26 Oakpark – but in a different part of town. Did the killer get the wrong house? It won’t be long before you find out…]]></book_description>
    <book id="215998781">
      <num_pages>386</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Andrea Mara</author_name>
    <isbn>1529927803</isbn>
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                                      author: Andrea Mara<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.78<br/>
                                      book published: 2025<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
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                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Mon, 19 Jan 2026 17:12:09 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>The Poet Empress</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8280149921?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>231127166</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>Debut author Shen Tao introduces readers to the lush, deadly world of <i>The Poet Empress, </i>a sweeping, epic and intimate fantasy perfect for fans of <i>The Serpent &amp; the Wings of Night, The Song of Achilles </i>and<i> She Who Became the Sun</i>.</b><br /><br />In the waning years of the Azalea Dynasty, the emperor is dying, the land consumed by famine, and poetry magic lost to all except the powerful.<br /><br />Wei Yin is desperate. After the fifth death of a sibling, with her family and village on the brink of starvation, she will do anything to save those she loves.<br /><br />Even offer herself as concubine to the cruel heir of the beautiful and brutal Azalea House.<br /><br />But in a twist of fate, the palace stands on the knife-edge of civil war with Wei trapped in its center…at the side of a violent prince.<br /><br />To survive, Wei must harden her heart, rely on her wit, and become dangerous herself. Even if it means becoming a poet in a world where women are forbidden to read—and composing the most powerful spell of all. A ballad of death...and love.<br /><br />The Poet Empress<i> is an epic fantasy that explores darker themes, subjects, and scenes that may not be suitable for all readers. Please see the author's content note at the beginning of the book.</i>]]></book_description>
    <book id="231127166">
      <num_pages>400</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Shen Tao</author_name>
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                                      author: Shen Tao<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.37<br/>
                                      book published: 2026<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Mon, 19 Jan 2026 17:10:57 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>The Red Winter</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8280146407?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>231679954</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>A devastating love story. A bewitching twist on history. A blood-drenched hunt for purpose, power, and redemption. </b><br /><br />In 1785, Professor Sebastian Grave receives the news he fears most: the terrible Beast of Gévaudan has returned, and the French countryside runs red in its wake. <br /><br />Sebastian knows the Beast. A monster-slayer with centuries of experience, he joined the hunt for the creature twenty years ago and watched it slaughter its way through a long and bloody winter. Even with the help of his indwelling demon, Sarmodel – who takes payment in living hearts – it nearly cost him his life to bring the monster down.<br /><br />Now, two decades later, Sebastian has been recalled to the hunt by Antoine Avenel d’Ocerne, an estranged lover who shares a dark history with the Beast and a terrible secret with Sebastian. Drawn by both the chance to finish the Beast for good and the promise of a reconciliation with Antoine, Sebastian cannot refuse. <br /><br />But Gévaudan is not as he remembers it, and Sebastian’s unfinished business is everywhere he looks. Years of misery have driven the people to desperation, and France teeters on the edge of revolution. Sebastian’s arcane activities – not to mention his demonic counterpart – have also attracted the inquisitorial eye of the French clergy. And the Beast is poised to close his jaws around them all and plunge the continent into war. <br /><br />Debut author Cameron Sullivan tears the heart out of history with this darkly entertaining retelling of the hunt for the Beast of Gévaudan. Lifting the veil on the hidden world behind our own, it reimagines the story of Europe, from Imperial Rome to Saint Jehanne d’Arc, the madness of Gilles de Rais and the first flickers of the French Revolution.]]></book_description>
    <book id="231679954">
      <num_pages>529</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Cameron Sullivan</author_name>
    <isbn>1250362776</isbn>
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    <average_rating>3.90</average_rating>
    <book_published>2026</book_published>
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                                      author: Cameron Sullivan<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.90<br/>
                                      book published: 2026<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
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                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sat, 10 Jan 2026 13:45:51 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Seek the Traitor's Son (The Burning Empire, #1)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8247533392?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>240019870</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>DELUXE EDITION—a beautiful hardcover edition featuring sprayed edges.</b><br /><br /><b>A new epic romantic, dystopian fantasy begins in <i>Seek the Traitor's Son</i>, from #1 <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author Veronica Roth</b><br /><br />Elegy Ahn did not ask for destiny to find her.<br /><br />She is happy with her life as a soldier, defending her small country from the Talusar, a powerful nation who worships a deadly Fever. A fever that blesses half of its victims with mysterious gifts.<br /><br />But then she’s summoned to hear a prophecy–her, and the most ruthless of Talusar generals, Rava Vidar. Brought face to face, they learn that one of them will lead their people to victory over the other…but they don’t know which. And at the center of both of their fates: a man. A man that, Elegy is told, she will fall in love with.<br /><br />In just one day, Elegy’s old life–her job, her purpose, and her future–is over. She and Rava are destined to collide, with the fate of their nations hanging in the balance. And when they do, only one will be left standing.<br /><br />Elegy intends to make sure it’s her.]]></book_description>
    <book id="240019870">
      <num_pages>416</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Veronica Roth</author_name>
    <isbn>1250347904</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
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    <average_rating>4.04</average_rating>
    <book_published>2026</book_published>
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                                      author: Veronica Roth<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.04<br/>
                                      book published: 2026<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/01/10<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sat, 03 Jan 2026 10:48:46 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>Th1rt3en (Eddie Flynn, #4)</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8217206199?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>36217425</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<i>The serial killer isn't on trial.<br /><br />He's on the jury...</i><br /><br />They were Hollywood's hottest power couple. They had the world at their feet. Now one of them is dead and Hollywood star Robert Solomon is charged with the brutal murder of his beautiful wife.<br /><br />This is the celebrity murder trial of the century and the defence want one man on their team: con artist turned lawyer Eddie Flynn.<br /><br />All the evidence points to Robert's guilt, but as the trial begins a series of sinister incidents in the court room start to raise doubts in Eddie's mind.<br /><br />What if there's more than one actor in the courtroom?<br /><br />What if the killer isn't on trial? What if the killer is on the jury?]]></book_description>
    <book id="36217425">
      <num_pages>356</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Steve Cavanagh</author_name>
    <isbn>1409170667</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
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    <average_rating>4.18</average_rating>
    <book_published>2018</book_published>
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                                      author: Steve Cavanagh<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.18<br/>
                                      book published: 2018<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2026/01/03<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Fri, 02 Jan 2026 13:40:00 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>Martyr!</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7075154805?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>139400713</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, <i>Martyr!</i> heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.</b><br /><br />Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.<br /><br />Kaveh Akbar’s <i>Martyr!</i> is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.]]></book_description>
    <book id="139400713">
      <num_pages>332</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Kaveh Akbar</author_name>
    <isbn>0593537610</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
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    <user_review><![CDATA[Absolutely excellent, uniquely bizarre, and very fun! An interesting exploration of death, grief, addiction, identity, ethnicity, mental illness, martyrdom, and trying to find meaning in a seemingly meaningless life. Juggles a lot of ideas and presents them in quite peculiar ways, yet handles them with great precision and insight. Akbar’s humour and poeticism bleeds across the page and enraptures you whole. A really great novel. ]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.15</average_rating>
    <book_published>2024</book_published>
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                                      author: Kaveh Akbar<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.15<br/>
                                      book published: 2024<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: 2025/12/23<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/01/02<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/>Absolutely excellent, uniquely bizarre, and very fun! An interesting exploration of death, grief, addiction, identity, ethnicity, mental illness, martyrdom, and trying to find meaning in a seemingly meaningless life. Juggles a lot of ideas and presents them in quite peculiar ways, yet handles them with great precision and insight. Akbar’s humour and poeticism bleeds across the page and enraptures you whole. A really great novel. <br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Fri, 02 Jan 2026 13:35:48 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>The Emperor of Gladness</title>
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    <book_id>219848315</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>Ocean Vuong returns with an achingly beautiful novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.</b><br /><br />One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.<br /><br />Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, <i>The Emperor of Gladness</i> shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Vuong’s writing – formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness – are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.]]></book_description>
    <book id="219848315">
      <num_pages>402</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Ocean Vuong</author_name>
    <isbn>059383187X</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>3</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Fri, 2 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Fri, 02 Jan 2026 13:35:48 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Thu, 10 Oct 2024 23:50:38 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves></user_shelves>
    <user_review><![CDATA[A bit disappointing, as I didn’t enjoy this as much as <i>On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous</i>, which was one of my favourite books of last year. However, this book was still good and I’m glad that I read it. There were certain scenes and emotional moments that were pretty beautiful and immersive. Though a bit understated, the writing was beautiful, with one particular quote at the end striking me quite hard because of my own personal struggles with growing up and the future. The characters were very well-written as well, they all had strong personalities and felt quite authentic and real, as eccentric as they may be. The themes of friendship, love, family, and finding your place in the world were explored very well. I’m a bit conflicted surrounding the ending, but I liked it for the most part. Overall, a very nice, solid, interesting read .]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.85</average_rating>
    <book_published>2025</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/219848315-the-emperor-of-gladness?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="The Emperor of Gladness" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1747142606l/219848315._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Ocean Vuong<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.85<br/>
                                      book published: 2025<br/>
                                      rating: 3<br/>
                                      read at: 2026/01/02<br/>
                                      date added: 2026/01/02<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/>A bit disappointing, as I didn’t enjoy this as much as <i>On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous</i>, which was one of my favourite books of last year. However, this book was still good and I’m glad that I read it. There were certain scenes and emotional moments that were pretty beautiful and immersive. Though a bit understated, the writing was beautiful, with one particular quote at the end striking me quite hard because of my own personal struggles with growing up and the future. The characters were very well-written as well, they all had strong personalities and felt quite authentic and real, as eccentric as they may be. The themes of friendship, love, family, and finding your place in the world were explored very well. I’m a bit conflicted surrounding the ending, but I liked it for the most part. Overall, a very nice, solid, interesting read .<br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8201992745?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 31 Dec 2025 20:22:38 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>All Them Dogs</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8201992745?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>239760314</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b> For fans of Lisa McInerney, Gabriel Krauze, and Graeme Armstrong, All Them Dogs is a fizzing debut from one of Ireland's most striking new voices </b><br /><br />Things are different since Tony Ward landed back in town.<br /><br />The West Dublin gangland has changed. His old mentor is dead, and his best pal Kenny Boyle is on the straight and narrow. After five years keeping quiet across the way, Tony is keen to reinstate himself, and when the opportunity to work side by side with Darren 'Flute' Walsh, a top enforcer of notorious crime boss Angus Lavelle, it feels like a no brainer.<br /><br />Biting off more than he can chew has never bothered Tony Ward, but Flute Walsh is not the meek, quiet boy Tony remembers from school. Brooding, stoic, and unpredictably dangerous, Tony finds himself drawn to his new associate in more ways than one. With retribution from his past actions always close in the rear view, the protection offered by Flute's standing in the gang is crucial. But how safe is Tony really, when a mutual attraction starts to complicate matters?]]></book_description>
    <book id="239760314">
      <num_pages>240</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Djamel White</author_name>
    <isbn>1399824465</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Wed, 31 Dec 2025 20:22:38 -0800]]></user_date_added>
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    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.79</average_rating>
    <book_published>2026</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/239760314-all-them-dogs?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="All Them Dogs" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1754403571l/239760314._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Djamel White<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.79<br/>
                                      book published: 2026<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/12/31<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8172548045?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 24 Dec 2025 15:46:55 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>The Charioteer</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8172548045?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>67699</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1389484698l/67699._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_medium_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1389484698l/67699._SX98_.jpg]]></book_medium_image_url>
    <book_large_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1389484698l/67699.jpg]]></book_large_image_url>
    <book_description><![CDATA[After enduring an injury at Dunkirk during World War II, Laurie Odell is sent to a rural veterans’ hospital in England to convalesce. There he befriends the young, bright Andrew, a conscientious objector serving as an orderly. As they find solace and companionship together in the idyllic surroundings of the hospital, their friendship blooms into a discreet, chaste romance. Then one day, Ralph Lanyon, a mentor from Laurie’s schoolboy days, suddenly reappears in Laurie’s life, and draws him into a tight-knit social circle of world-weary gay men. Laurie is forced to choose between the sweet ideals of innocence and the distinct pleasures of experience. <br /><br />Originally published in the United States in 1959, The Charioteer is a bold, unapologetic portrayal of male homosexuality during World War II that stands with Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar and Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories as a monumental work in gay literature.]]></book_description>
    <book id="67699">
      <num_pages>347</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Mary Renault</author_name>
    <isbn>0375714189</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Wed, 24 Dec 2025 15:46:55 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Wed, 24 Dec 2025 15:46:55 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.10</average_rating>
    <book_published>1953</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/67699.The_Charioteer?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="The Charioteer" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1389484698l/67699._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Mary Renault<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.10<br/>
                                      book published: 1953<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/12/24<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8172544117?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 24 Dec 2025 15:44:25 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>The City and the Pillar</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8172544117?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>88884</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320504639l/88884._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[A literary <i>cause célèbre</i> when first published more than fifty years ago, Gore Vidal's now-classic <b>The City and the Pillar </b>stands as a landmark novel of the gay experience.<br /><br />Jim, a handsome, all-American athlete, has always been shy around girls. But when he and his best friend, Bob, partake in "awful kid stuff", the experience forms Jim's ideal of spiritual completion. Defying his parents’ expectations, Jim strikes out on his own, hoping to find Bob and rekindle their amorous friendship. Along the way he struggles with what he feels is his unique bond with Bob and with his persistent attraction to other men. Upon finally encountering Bob years later, the force of his hopes for a life together leads to a devastating climax. The first novel of its kind to appear on the American literary landscape, <b>The City and the Pillar</b><i> </i>remains a forthright and uncompromising portrayal of sexual relationships between men.]]></book_description>
    <book id="88884">
      <num_pages>207</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Gore Vidal</author_name>
    <isbn>1400030374</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Wed, 24 Dec 2025 15:44:25 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Wed, 24 Dec 2025 15:44:25 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.86</average_rating>
    <book_published>1948</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/88884.The_City_and_the_Pillar?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="The City and the Pillar" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320504639l/88884._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Gore Vidal<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.86<br/>
                                      book published: 1948<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/12/24<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8172540537?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 24 Dec 2025 15:42:13 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>What Belongs to You</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8172540537?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>22929602</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1447384662l/22929602._SX50_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[On an unseasonably warm autumn day, an American teacher enters a public bathroom beneath Sofia’s National Palace of Culture. There he meets Mitko, a charismatic young hustler, and pays him for sex. He returns to Mitko again and again over the next few months, drawn by hunger and loneliness and risk, and finds himself ensnared in a relationship in which lust leads to mutual predation, and tenderness can transform into violence. As he struggles to reconcile his longing with the anguish it creates, he’s forced to grapple with his own fraught history, the world of his southern childhood where to be queer was to be a pariah. There are unnerving similarities between his past and the foreign country he finds himself in, a country whose geography and griefs he discovers as he learns more of Mitko’s own narrative, his private history of illness, exploitation, and disease.<br /><br /><i>What Belongs to You</i> is a stunning debut novel of desire and its consequences. With lyric intensity and startling eroticism, Garth Greenwell has created an indelible story about the ways in which our pasts and cultures, our scars and shames can shape who we are and determine how we love.<br /><br />Listening length: 6 hours, 11 minutes]]></book_description>
    <book id="22929602">
      <num_pages>195</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Garth Greenwell</author_name>
    <isbn>0374288224</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Wed, 24 Dec 2025 15:42:13 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Wed, 24 Dec 2025 15:42:12 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.80</average_rating>
    <book_published>2016</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22929602-what-belongs-to-you?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="What Belongs to You" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1447384662l/22929602._SX50_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Garth Greenwell<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.80<br/>
                                      book published: 2016<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/12/24<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8168292611?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Tue, 23 Dec 2025 00:41:36 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>Land</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8168292611?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>241126782</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<i>
  <b>'You will never understand how the land remembers, how deep the roots grow'</b>
</i><br /><br /><b>A spellbinding story of separation, longing, recovery and survival as a family makes a new home in the aftermath of tragedy.</b><br /><br />On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.<br /><br />The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping, and get them both home?<br /><br /><i>Land </i>is a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away.]]></book_description>
    <book id="241126782">
      <num_pages>400</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Maggie O&apos;Farrell</author_name>
    <isbn>0593320646</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Tue, 23 Dec 2025 00:41:36 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Tue, 23 Dec 2025 00:41:36 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.17</average_rating>
    <book_published>2026</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/241126782-land?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Land" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1764056109l/241126782._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Maggie O'Farrell<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.17<br/>
                                      book published: 2026<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/12/23<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8166625660?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Mon, 22 Dec 2025 11:00:06 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8166625660?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>222476092</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<strong>Nothing brings people together like a common enemy, and witches were the greatest enemy of all.</strong><br /><br />Scotland, 1563: Crops failed. People starved. And the Devil's influence was stronger than ever—at least, that's what everyone believed. If you were a woman living in Scotland during this turbulent time, there was a very good chance that you, or someone you knew, would be tried as a witch.<br /><br />During the chaos of the Reformation, violence against women was codified for the first time in the Witchcraft Act—a tool of theocratic control with one chilling to root out witches and rid the land of evil. What followed was a dark and misogynistic chapter in history that fanned the flames of witch hunts across the globe, including in the United States and beyond.<br /><br />In <em>How to Kill a Witch</em>, Zoe Venditozzi and Claire Mitchell, hosts of the popular <em>Witches of Scotland</em> podcast, unravel the grim yet absurdly bureaucratic process of identifying, accusing, trying, and executing women as witches. With sharp wit and keen feminist insight, they reveal the inner workings of a patriarchal system designed to weaponize fear and oppress women.<br /><br />This captivating (and often infuriating) account, which weaves a rich tapestry of trial transcripts, witness accounts, and the documents that set the legal grounds for the witch hunts, exposes how this violent period of history mirrors today's struggles for justice and equality. <em>How to Kill a Witch</em> is a powerful, darkly humorous reminder of the dangers of superstition, bias, and ignorance, and a warning to never forget the past… while raising the question of whether it could ever happen again.]]></book_description>
    <book id="222476092">
      <num_pages>320</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Zoe Venditozzi</author_name>
    <isbn>1464241228</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
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    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.81</average_rating>
    <book_published>2025</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222476092-how-to-kill-a-witch?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy&#39;s Guide to Silencing Women" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1746641921l/222476092._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Zoe Venditozzi<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.81<br/>
                                      book published: 2025<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/12/22<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8166622425?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Mon, 22 Dec 2025 10:58:43 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8166622425?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>238226991</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>A spellbinding account of a family devastated by the sudden death of their nineteen-year-old son, only to discover that he had created a secret life which drew him into the dangerous criminal underworld that lies beneath London’s glittering surface</b><br /><br />In the early morning of November 29th, 2019, surveillance cameras at the headquarters of MI6, Britain’s spy agency, captured video of a young man pacing back and forth on a high balcony of Riverwalk, a luxury tower on the bank of the river Thames. At 2:24 AM he jumped into the river.<br /><br />In a quiet London neighborhood several miles away, Rachelle Brettler was worried about her son. Zac had told her that he had gone to stay with a friend, but then he did not come home. Days later, a police car pulled up and two officers relayed the dreadful news: her son was dead.<br /><br />In their unbearable grief, Rachelle and her husband, Matthew, struggled to understand what had happened to Zac. He had his troubles, but in no way seemed suicidal. As they would soon discover, however, there was a lot they did not know about their son. Only after his death did they learn that he had adopted a fictitious alter-ego: Zac Ismailov, son of a Russian oligarch and heir to a great fortune. Under this guise, Zac had become entangled with a slippery London businessman named Akbar Shamji, and a murderous gangster known as “Indian Dave.” As the Brettlers set about investigating their son’s death, they were pulled into a different and more dangerous London than the one they’d always known, and came to believe that something much more nefarious than a suicide had claimed Zac’s life. But to their immense frustration, Scotland Yard seemed unable—or unwilling—to bring the perpetrators to justice. <br /><br />In a bravura feat of reporting and writing, Patrick Radden Keefe chronicles the Brettlers’ quest, peeling back layers of mystery and exposing the seedy truths behind the glamorous London of posh mansions and private nightclubs, a city in which everything is for sale, and aspirational fantasies are underwritten by dirty money and corruption. <i>London Falling</i> is a mesmerizing investigation of an inexplicable death and a powerful narrative driven by suspense and staggering revelations. But it is also an intimate and deeply poignant inquiry into the nature of parental love and the challenges of being a parent today, a portrait of a family trying to solve the riddle not just of how their son died, but of who he really was in life.]]></book_description>
    <book id="238226991">
      <num_pages>361</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Patrick Radden Keefe</author_name>
    <isbn>0385548532</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
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    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.28</average_rating>
    <book_published>2026</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/238226991-london-falling?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family&#39;s Search for Truth" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1751942777l/238226991._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Patrick Radden Keefe<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.28<br/>
                                      book published: 2026<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/12/22<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Thu, 18 Dec 2025 01:14:50 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Godsgrave (The Nevernight Chronicle #2)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4118732609?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>41224974</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>A ruthless young assassin continues her journey for revenge in this new epic fantasy from New York Times bestselling author Jay Kristoff.</b><br /><br />Assassin Mia Corvere has found her place among the Blades of Our Lady of Blessed Murder, but many in the Red Church ministry think she’s far from earned it. Plying her bloody trade in a backwater of the Republic, she’s no closer to ending Consul Scaeva and Cardinal Duomo, or avenging her familia. And after a deadly confrontation with an old enemy, Mia begins to suspect the motives of the Red Church itself.<br /><br />When it’s announced that Scaeva and Duomo will be making a rare public appearance at the conclusion of the grand games in Godsgrave, Mia defies the Church and sells herself to a gladiatorial collegium for a chance to finally end them. Upon the sands of the arena, Mia finds new allies, bitter rivals, and more questions about her strange affinity for the shadows. But as conspiracies unfold within the collegium walls, and the body count rises, Mia will be forced to choose between loyalty and revenge, and uncover a secret that could change the very face of her world.<br /><br />Set in the world of Nevernight, which Publishers Weekly called “absorbing in its complexity and bold in its bloodiness,” Godsgrave will continue to thrill and satisfy fantasy fans everywhere.]]></book_description>
    <book id="41224974">
      <num_pages>20</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Jay Kristoff</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Wed, 11 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Thu, 18 Dec 2025 01:14:50 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Fri, 16 Jul 2021 21:48:41 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>fantasy</user_shelves>
    <user_review><![CDATA[Fast-paced, engrossingly-written and plot-twisty, with cruel violence and malicious darkness, this sequel is every bit better than its bloody, gorey predecessor. GIVE ME THE THIRD ONE ASAP, I DON’T WANT ANY FURTHER QUESTIONS.]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.32</average_rating>
    <book_published>2017</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41224974-godsgrave?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Godsgrave (The Nevernight Chronicle #2)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1534699968l/41224974._SX50_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Jay Kristoff<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.32<br/>
                                      book published: 2017<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: 2021/08/11<br/>
                                      date added: 2025/12/18<br/>
                                      shelves: fantasy<br/>
                                      review: <br/>Fast-paced, engrossingly-written and plot-twisty, with cruel violence and malicious darkness, this sequel is every bit better than its bloody, gorey predecessor. GIVE ME THE THIRD ONE ASAP, I DON’T WANT ANY FURTHER QUESTIONS.<br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8144487319?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sat, 13 Dec 2025 21:39:41 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>Assata: An Autobiography</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8144487319?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>100322</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[On May 2, 1973, Black Panther Assata Shakur (aka JoAnne Chesimard) lay in a hospital, close to death, handcuffed to her bed, while local, state, and federal police attempted to question her about the shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike that had claimed the life of a white state trooper. Long a target of J. Edgar Hoover's campaign to defame, infiltrate, and criminalize Black nationalist organizations and their leaders, Shakur was incarcerated for four years prior to her conviction on flimsy evidence in 1977 as an accomplice to murder.<br /><br />This intensely personal and political autobiography belies the fearsome image of JoAnne Chesimard long projected by the media and the state. With wit and candor, Assata Shakur recounts the experiences that led her to a life of activism and portrays the strengths, weaknesses, and eventual demise of Black and White revolutionary groups at the hand of government officials. The result is a signal contribution to the literature about growing up Black in America that has already taken its place alongside <i>The Autobiography of Malcolm X</i> and the works of Maya Angelou.<br /><br />Two years after her conviction, Assata Shakur escaped from prison. She was given political asylum by Cuba, where she now resides.]]></book_description>
    <book id="100322">
      <num_pages>274</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Assata Shakur</author_name>
    <isbn>1556520743</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sat, 13 Dec 2025 21:39:41 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sat, 13 Dec 2025 21:39:40 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.60</average_rating>
    <book_published>1987</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/100322.Assata?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Assata: An Autobiography" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328857268l/100322._SX50_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Assata Shakur<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.60<br/>
                                      book published: 1987<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/12/13<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8144487206?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sat, 13 Dec 2025 21:39:36 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[The Autobiography of Malcolm X]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8144487206?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>92057</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Alternate cover for ISBN 9780345350688<br /><br />Through a life of passion and struggle, Malcolm X became one of the most influential figures of the 20th Century. In this riveting account, he tells of his journey from a prison cell to Mecca, describing his transition from hoodlum to Muslim minister. Here, the man who called himself "the angriest Black man in America" relates how his conversion to true Islam helped him confront his rage and recognize the brotherhood of all mankind. <br /><br />An established classic of modern America, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" was hailed by the New York Times as "Extraordinary. A brilliant, painful, important book." Still extraordinary, still important, this electrifying story has transformed Malcolm X's life into his legacy. The strength of his words, and the power of his ideas continue to resonate more than a generation after they first appeared.]]></book_description>
    <book id="92057">
      <num_pages>466</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Malcolm X</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sat, 13 Dec 2025 21:39:36 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sat, 13 Dec 2025 21:39:36 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.36</average_rating>
    <book_published>1965</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/92057.The_Autobiography_of_Malcolm_X?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="The Autobiography of Malcolm X" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1434682864l/92057._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Malcolm X<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.36<br/>
                                      book published: 1965<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/12/13<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8144485685?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sat, 13 Dec 2025 21:38:32 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[How Europe Underdeveloped Africa]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8144485685?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>40630</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<blockquote>The decisiveness of the short period of colonialism and its negative consequences for Africa spring mainly from the fact that Africa lost power. Power is the ultimate determinant in human society, being basic to the relations within any group and between groups. It implies the ability to defend one's interests and if necessary to impose one’s will by any means available. In relations between peoples, the question of power determines maneuverability in bargaining, the extent to which a people survive as a physical and cultural entity. When one society finds itself forced to relinquish power entirely to another society, that in itself is a form of underdevelopment.</blockquote><br />Before a bomb ended his life in the summer of 1980, Walter Rodney had created a powerful legacy. This pivotal work, <em>How Europe Underdeveloped Africa</em>, had already brought a new perspective to the question of underdevelopment in Africa. his Marxist analysis went far beyond the heretofore accepted approach in the study of Third World underdevelopment. <em>How Europe Underdeveloped Africa</em> is an excellent introductory study for the student who wishes to better understand the dynamics of Africa’s contemporary relations with the West.]]></book_description>
    <book id="40630">
      <num_pages>312</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Walter Rodney</author_name>
    <isbn>0882580965</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sat, 13 Dec 2025 21:38:32 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sat, 13 Dec 2025 21:38:31 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.41</average_rating>
    <book_published>1971</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40630.How_Europe_Underdeveloped_Africa?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388405716l/40630._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Walter Rodney<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.41<br/>
                                      book published: 1971<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/12/13<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8144485046?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sat, 13 Dec 2025 21:38:04 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>Women, Race &amp; Class</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8144485046?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>635635</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>From one of our most important scholars and civil rights activist icon, a powerful study of the women’s liberation movement and the tangled knot of oppression facing Black women.<br /><br />"Angela Davis is herself a woman of undeniable courage. She should be heard." —<i>The New York Times</i></b><br /><br />Angela Davis provides a powerful history of the social and political influence of whiteness and elitism in feminism, from abolitionist days to the present, and demonstrates how the racist and classist biases of its leaders inevitably hampered any collective ambitions. While Black women were aided by some activists like Sarah and Angelina Grimke and the suffrage cause found unwavering support in Frederick Douglass, many women played on the fears of white supremacists for political gain rather than take an intersectional approach to liberation. Here, Davis not only contextualizes the legacy and pitfalls of civil and women's rights activists, but also discusses Communist women, the murder of Emmitt Till, and Margaret Sanger's racism. Davis shows readers how the inequalities between Black and white women influence the contemporary issues of rape, reproductive freedom, housework and child care in this bold and indispensable work.]]></book_description>
    <book id="635635">
      <num_pages>271</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Angela Y. Davis</author_name>
    <isbn>0394713516</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sat, 13 Dec 2025 21:38:04 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sat, 13 Dec 2025 21:38:03 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.59</average_rating>
    <book_published>1981</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/635635.Women_Race_Class?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Women, Race &amp; Class" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1629762234l/635635._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Angela Y. Davis<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.59<br/>
                                      book published: 1981<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/12/13<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8144484351?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sat, 13 Dec 2025 21:37:36 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>Pedagogy of the Oppressed</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8144484351?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>72657</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[First published in Portuguese in 1968, <i>Pedagogy of the Oppressed</i> was translated and published in English in 1970. The methodology of the late Paulo Freire has helped to empower countless impoverished and illiterate people throughout the world. Freire's work has taken on especial urgency in the United States and Western Europe, where the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in cities and urban centers is increasingly accepted as the norm. With a substantive new introduction on Freire's life and the remarkable impact of this book by writer and Freire confidant and authority Donaldo Macedo, this anniversary edition of <i>Pedagogy of the Oppressed</i> will inspire a new generation of educators, students, and general readers for years to come.]]></book_description>
    <book id="72657">
      <num_pages>183</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Paulo Freire</author_name>
    <isbn>0826412769</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sat, 13 Dec 2025 21:37:36 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sat, 13 Dec 2025 21:37:35 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.30</average_rating>
    <book_published>1968</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/72657.Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Pedagogy of the Oppressed" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388180018l/72657._SX50_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Paulo Freire<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.30<br/>
                                      book published: 1968<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/12/13<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4065227390?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Thu, 11 Dec 2025 03:16:35 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4065227390?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>32061597</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<i>Nevernight</i> is the first in an epic new fantasy series from the New York Times bestselling author, Jay Kristoff.<br /><br />In a land where three suns almost never set, a fledgling killer joins a school of assassins, seeking vengeance against the powers who destroyed her family.<br /><br />Daughter of an executed traitor, Mia Corvere is barely able to escape her father’s failed rebellion with her life. Alone and friendless, she hides in a city built from the bones of a dead god, hunted by the Senate and her father’s former comrades. But her gift for speaking with the shadows leads her to the door of a retired killer, and a future she never imagined.<br /><br />Now, a sixteen year old Mia is apprenticed to the deadliest flock of assassins in the entire Republic — the Red Church. Treachery and trials await her with the Church’s halls, and to fail is to die. But if she survives to initiation, Mia will be inducted among the chosen of the Lady of Blessed Murder, and one step closer to the only thing she desires.<br /><br />Revenge.]]></book_description>
    <book id="32061597">
      <num_pages>21</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Jay Kristoff</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>3</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Sun, 20 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Thu, 11 Dec 2025 03:16:35 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Fri, 18 Jun 2021 10:46:37 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>fantasy</user_shelves>
    <user_review><![CDATA[<b> 3 stars. As blood-soaked as a crime scene, <i>Nevernight</i> proves to be an edgy, razor-edged fantasy full of macabre murderesses, servant shadows and a quiet comedy that dusts the story like a fine, fine powder. </b><br /><br />After her rebel father is executed, Mia Corvere begins to seek out revenge for those who had hung him. The three names of the three powerful men who ruined her family, who ruined her life, have scorched themselves into her brain, painted themselves onto her heart. She desires more than nothing else to kill them, and so searches for the Red Church—an organization of deadly assassins who devote themselves to the Goddess of Night, their Lady of Blessed Murder. They are Her swords, Her scythes, the weapons with which She uses to dole out death. And Mia wishes to become one—to be a Blade, to gain the training she will need in order to enact the revenge that flows through her blood.<br /><br />This book was great. It’s black, it’s brutal, it’s violent and gore-y and thrumming with character, the witty humour and smile-inducing sass pulsing within the pages (Mister Kindly was very much one of the highlights of this book). It was a good, solid volume, a fine entry to this series and to this world—which is very strong in his novel, full of interesting histories and characters, filmed with the brief touch of Venice and Rome (locations which clearly inspired some places in the book) while still standing on its own. <i>Nevernight</i> never really gets boring, keeping up a steady pace throughout its normal length, pocketful of intriguing flashbacks, gritty well-written action, and fun creative aspects. The writing is natural and feels quite cheeky, and sometimes very pretty (though it does have its moments, like when Jay Kristoff describes one of his characters as beautiful as “a fresh suicide”, which is just... a lot, and is strange, and screams—absolutely <i>screams</i>—of something you would find the kohl-wearing chain-having edgy emo kids probably scribbling down in their poetry notebooks in the late 2000’s while listening to Panic! At the Disco’s infamous “I Write Sins Not Tragedies”). The only problems I had with the book was that the ending felt not as solid as the rest of the book, some of the characters were rather boring and bothersome (ahem Jessamine), the magic system wasn’t the best thought out (I love a good magic system, and this one was still good, I liked it, just wanted more thinking), and I <i>definitely</i> could’ve done without the awkward underage sex scenes. <br /><br />Still, I liked the book. The characters are also fun—hearing about Mia’s backstory and watching it unfurl was engaging. The writing is well-done, the world was intriguing, the concept was very arresting, and Mia and her past were all very interesting and fun. I liked Mia and Tric’s relationship, I liked Mia and Mister Kindly’s relationship, Mercurio was cool, Ash was cool, I really enjoyed a lot of the teachers and their lessons. Thought it was good, solid. And overall I’m not totally opposed to reading the second one.]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.14</average_rating>
    <book_published>2016</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32061597-nevernight?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1489434023l/32061597._SX50_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Jay Kristoff<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.14<br/>
                                      book published: 2016<br/>
                                      rating: 3<br/>
                                      read at: 2021/06/20<br/>
                                      date added: 2025/12/11<br/>
                                      shelves: fantasy<br/>
                                      review: <br/><b> 3 stars. As blood-soaked as a crime scene, <i>Nevernight</i> proves to be an edgy, razor-edged fantasy full of macabre murderesses, servant shadows and a quiet comedy that dusts the story like a fine, fine powder. </b><br /><br />After her rebel father is executed, Mia Corvere begins to seek out revenge for those who had hung him. The three names of the three powerful men who ruined her family, who ruined her life, have scorched themselves into her brain, painted themselves onto her heart. She desires more than nothing else to kill them, and so searches for the Red Church—an organization of deadly assassins who devote themselves to the Goddess of Night, their Lady of Blessed Murder. They are Her swords, Her scythes, the weapons with which She uses to dole out death. And Mia wishes to become one—to be a Blade, to gain the training she will need in order to enact the revenge that flows through her blood.<br /><br />This book was great. It’s black, it’s brutal, it’s violent and gore-y and thrumming with character, the witty humour and smile-inducing sass pulsing within the pages (Mister Kindly was very much one of the highlights of this book). It was a good, solid volume, a fine entry to this series and to this world—which is very strong in his novel, full of interesting histories and characters, filmed with the brief touch of Venice and Rome (locations which clearly inspired some places in the book) while still standing on its own. <i>Nevernight</i> never really gets boring, keeping up a steady pace throughout its normal length, pocketful of intriguing flashbacks, gritty well-written action, and fun creative aspects. The writing is natural and feels quite cheeky, and sometimes very pretty (though it does have its moments, like when Jay Kristoff describes one of his characters as beautiful as “a fresh suicide”, which is just... a lot, and is strange, and screams—absolutely <i>screams</i>—of something you would find the kohl-wearing chain-having edgy emo kids probably scribbling down in their poetry notebooks in the late 2000’s while listening to Panic! At the Disco’s infamous “I Write Sins Not Tragedies”). The only problems I had with the book was that the ending felt not as solid as the rest of the book, some of the characters were rather boring and bothersome (ahem Jessamine), the magic system wasn’t the best thought out (I love a good magic system, and this one was still good, I liked it, just wanted more thinking), and I <i>definitely</i> could’ve done without the awkward underage sex scenes. <br /><br />Still, I liked the book. The characters are also fun—hearing about Mia’s backstory and watching it unfurl was engaging. The writing is well-done, the world was intriguing, the concept was very arresting, and Mia and her past were all very interesting and fun. I liked Mia and Tric’s relationship, I liked Mia and Mister Kindly’s relationship, Mercurio was cool, Ash was cool, I really enjoyed a lot of the teachers and their lessons. Thought it was good, solid. And overall I’m not totally opposed to reading the second one.<br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8119146505?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 03 Dec 2025 13:09:28 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[The Melancholy of Resistance (Apocalypse Quartet, #2)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8119146505?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>119512</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[A powerful, surreal novel, in the tradition of Gogol, about the chaotic events surrounding the arrival of a circus in a small Hungarian town. The Melancholy of Resistance, László Krasznahorkai's magisterial novel, depicts a chain of mysterious events in a small Hungarian town. A circus, promising to display the stuffed body of the largest whale in the world, arrives in the dead of winter, prompting bizarre rumours. Word spreads that the circus folk have a sinister purpose in mind, and the frightened citizens cling to any manifestation of order they can find - music, cosmology, fascism. The novel's characters are unforgettable: the evil Mrs. Eszter, plotting her takeover of the town; her weakling husband; and Valuska, our hapless hero with his head in the clouds, who is the tender center of the book, the only pure and noble soul to be found. Compact, powerful and intense, The Melancholy of Resistance, as its enormously gifted translator George Szirtes puts it, "is a slow lava flow of narrative, a vast black river of type." And yet, miraculously, the novel, in the words of The Guardian, "lifts the reader along in lunar leaps and bounds."]]></book_description>
    <book id="119512">
      <num_pages>314</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>László Krasznahorkai</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Wed, 03 Dec 2025 13:09:28 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Wed, 03 Dec 2025 13:09:27 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.15</average_rating>
    <book_published>1989</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/119512.The_Melancholy_of_Resistance?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="The Melancholy of Resistance (Apocalypse Quartet, #2)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1788270526l/119512._SX50_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: László Krasznahorkai<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.15<br/>
                                      book published: 1989<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/12/03<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8119143176?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 03 Dec 2025 13:07:55 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8119143176?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>213702691</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<strong><em>Perfect Victims</em> is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal―an ode to the steadfastness of a nation.</strong><br /><br />Palestine is a microcosm of the world: on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured―the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial.<br /><br />Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation.<br /><br />How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, <em>Perfect Victims</em> presents a powerfully simple demand: dignity for the Palestinian.]]></book_description>
    <book id="213702691">
      <num_pages>256</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Mohammed El-Kurd</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Wed, 03 Dec 2025 13:07:55 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Wed, 03 Dec 2025 13:07:54 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.77</average_rating>
    <book_published>2025</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/213702691-perfect-victims-and-the-politics-of-appeal?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1733936829l/213702691._SX50_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Mohammed El-Kurd<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.77<br/>
                                      book published: 2025<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/12/03<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
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    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8119127808?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Wed, 03 Dec 2025 13:03:46 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8119127808?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>213870084</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in the heart of an Empire which doesn’t consider you fully human.</b><br /><br />On Oct 25th, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet was viewed over 10 million times. <br /><br /><i>One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This</i> chronicles the deep fracture which has occurred for Black, brown, indigenous Americans, as well as the upcoming generation, many of whom had clung to a thread of faith in western ideals, in the idea that their countries, or the countries of their adoption, actually attempted to live up to the values they espouse. <br /><br />This book is a reckoning with what it means to live in the west, and what it means to live in a world run by a small group of countries—America, the UK, France and Germany.  It will be<i> The Fire Next Time</i> for a generation that understands we’re undergoing a shift in the so-called ‘rules-based order,’ a generation that understands the west can no longer be trusted to police and guide the world, or its own cities and campuses. It draws on intimate details of Omar’s own story as an emigrant who grew up believing in the western project, who was catapulted into journalism by the rupture of 9/11. <br /><br />This book is his heartsick breakup letter with the west. It is a breakup we are watching all over the U.S., on college campuses, on city streets, and the consequences of this rupture will be felt by all of us. His book is for all the people who want something better than what the west has served up. This is the book for our time.]]></book_description>
    <book id="213870084">
      <num_pages>208</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Omar El Akkad</author_name>
    <isbn>0593804147</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>5</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Wed, 3 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Wed, 03 Dec 2025 13:03:46 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Wed, 03 Dec 2025 13:00:37 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves></user_shelves>
    <user_review><![CDATA[Every single anecdote, every single sentence, every single word is gold. There were so many sections that I highlighted and re-read over and over. Deserves all the praise it has gotten. Omar El Akkad writes with such precision, conviction, passion, integrity, and honesty that it pierced me so many times while I read. Heartbreakingly real, frighteningly accurate, and rightfully damning. Free Palestine.]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.56</average_rating>
    <book_published>2025</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/213870084-one-day-everyone-will-have-always-been-against-this?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1764097849l/213870084._SX50_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Omar El Akkad<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.56<br/>
                                      book published: 2025<br/>
                                      rating: 5<br/>
                                      read at: 2025/12/03<br/>
                                      date added: 2025/12/03<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/>Every single anecdote, every single sentence, every single word is gold. There were so many sections that I highlighted and re-read over and over. Deserves all the praise it has gotten. Omar El Akkad writes with such precision, conviction, passion, integrity, and honesty that it pierced me so many times while I read. Heartbreakingly real, frighteningly accurate, and rightfully damning. Free Palestine.<br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8097322268?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Mon, 24 Nov 2025 18:00:34 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>By Night in Chile</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8097322268?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>63031</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1364676984l/63031._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[During the course of a single night, Father Sebastian Urrutia Lacroix, a Chilean priest, who is a member of Opus Dei, a literary critic and a mediocre poet, relives some of the crucial events of his life. He believes he is dying and in his feverish delirium various characters, both real and imaginary, appear to him as icy monsters.]]></book_description>
    <book id="63031">
      <num_pages>118</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Roberto Bolaño</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Mon, 24 Nov 2025 18:00:34 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Mon, 24 Nov 2025 18:00:33 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.94</average_rating>
    <book_published>2000</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/63031.By_Night_in_Chile?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="By Night in Chile" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1364676984l/63031._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Roberto Bolaño<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.94<br/>
                                      book published: 2000<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/11/24<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5758831433?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sat, 15 Nov 2025 20:32:15 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5758831433?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>40163119</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.<br /><br />Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders.<br /><br />Patrick Radden Keefe writes an intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions.]]></book_description>
    <book id="40163119">
      <num_pages>441</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Patrick Radden Keefe</author_name>
    <isbn>0385521316</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>5</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sat, 15 Nov 2025 20:32:15 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Thu, 10 Aug 2023 17:00:04 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>non-fiction</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.47</average_rating>
    <book_published>2018</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40163119-say-nothing?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1537315266l/40163119._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Patrick Radden Keefe<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.47<br/>
                                      book published: 2018<br/>
                                      rating: 5<br/>
                                      read at: 2025/11/15<br/>
                                      date added: 2025/11/15<br/>
                                      shelves: non-fiction<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5520519379?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 09 Nov 2025 21:09:01 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5520519379?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>38447</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1496592764l/38447._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now…<br /><br />Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, <i>The Handmaid's Tale</i> is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.]]></book_description>
    <book id="38447">
      <num_pages>311</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Margaret Atwood</author_name>
    <isbn>038549081X</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>4</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Mon, 13 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sun, 09 Nov 2025 21:09:01 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sun, 30 Apr 2023 10:27:52 -0700]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>science-fiction</user_shelves>
    <user_review><![CDATA[An incredible story that is so amazingly written. Offred as a character was funny, complex, and fascinating, with so much heart, intelligence, and beautiful yet restrained writing that perfectly illustrated her restricted conditions. The world-building was haunting, mysterious, and terribly real. The story was very gripping and I was so interested to see what happened next. I could not put this one down. I’ve been meaning to read Margaret Atwood’s work for a while now but I’ve procrastinated and put it off. I’m so glad one Saturday night I just decided to bite the bullet because now I am ready to fully dive into this woman’s wonderful work and prose.]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.15</average_rating>
    <book_published>1985</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38447.The_Handmaid_s_Tale?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid&#39;s Tale, #1)" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1496592764l/38447._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Margaret Atwood<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.15<br/>
                                      book published: 1985<br/>
                                      rating: 4<br/>
                                      read at: 2025/10/13<br/>
                                      date added: 2025/11/09<br/>
                                      shelves: science-fiction<br/>
                                      review: <br/>An incredible story that is so amazingly written. Offred as a character was funny, complex, and fascinating, with so much heart, intelligence, and beautiful yet restrained writing that perfectly illustrated her restricted conditions. The world-building was haunting, mysterious, and terribly real. The story was very gripping and I was so interested to see what happened next. I could not put this one down. I’ve been meaning to read Margaret Atwood’s work for a while now but I’ve procrastinated and put it off. I’m so glad one Saturday night I just decided to bite the bullet because now I am ready to fully dive into this woman’s wonderful work and prose.<br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8050579540?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Thu, 06 Nov 2025 13:50:40 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>A Truce That Is Not Peace</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8050579540?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>222376493</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1743687131l/222376493._SX50_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<p><b>Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Autobiography<br /><br />NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY <i>THE NEW YORKER, TIME, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF BOOKS, NPR, LIT HUB, ELECTRIC LITERATURE,</i> AND <i>BOOKPAGE</i><br /><br />"Revelatory." ―<i>New York Times Book Review</i><br />"Essential reading. A companion for turbulent times." ―Laura van den Berg<br />"Nothing short of a masterpiece." ―<i>The San Francisco Chronicle</i><br /><br />Internationally bestselling author Miriam Toews' memoir of the will to write―a work of disobedient memory, humor, and exquisite craft set against a content-hungry, prose-stuffed society.</b><br /><br />"Why do you write?' the organizer of a literary event in Mexico City asks Miriam Toews. Each attempted answer from Toews―all of them unsatisfactory to the organizer―surfaces new layers of grief, guilt, and futility connected to her sister's suicide. She has been keeping up, she realizes, a decades-old internal correspondence, filling a silence she barely understands. And we, her readers, come to see that the question is as impossible to answer as deciding whether to live life as a comedy or a tragedy.<br /><br />Marking the first time Toews has written her own life in nonfiction,A Truce That Is Not Peaceexplores the uneasy pact a writer makes with memory. Wildly inventive yet masterfully controlled; slyly casual yet momentous; wrenching and joyful; hilarious and humane―this is Miriam Toews at her dazzling best, remaking her world and inventing an astonishing new literary form to contain it.</p>]]></book_description>
    <book id="222376493">
      <num_pages>192</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Miriam Toews</author_name>
    <isbn>1639734740</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Thu, 06 Nov 2025 13:50:40 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Thu, 06 Nov 2025 13:50:39 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>3.81</average_rating>
    <book_published>2025</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222376493-a-truce-that-is-not-peace?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="A Truce That Is Not Peace" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1743687131l/222376493._SX50_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Miriam Toews<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 3.81<br/>
                                      book published: 2025<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/11/06<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8041070339?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 02 Nov 2025 20:29:11 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>An American Sunrise</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8041070339?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>43726586</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1562026439l/43726586._SX50_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[National Bestseller<br /><br />A stunning new volume from the first Native American Poet Laureate of the United States, informed by her tribal history and connection to the land. In the early 1800s, the Mvskoke people were forcibly removed from their original lands east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory, which is now part of Oklahoma. Two hundred years later, Joy Harjo returns to her family’s lands and opens a dialogue with history. In An American Sunrise , Harjo finds blessings in the abundance of her homeland and confronts the site where her people, and other indigenous families, essentially disappeared. From her memory of her mother’s death, to her beginnings in the native rights movement, to the fresh road with her beloved, Harjo’s personal life intertwines with tribal histories to create a space for renewed beginnings. Her poems sing of beauty and survival, illuminating a spirituality that connects her to her ancestors and thrums with the quiet anger of living in the ruins of injustice. A descendent of storytellers and “one of our finest―and most complicated―poets” ( Los Angeles Review of Books ), Joy Harjo continues her legacy with this latest powerful collection.]]></book_description>
    <book id="43726586">
      <num_pages>116</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Joy Harjo</author_name>
    <isbn>1324003863</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sun, 02 Nov 2025 20:29:11 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sun, 02 Nov 2025 20:29:11 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.28</average_rating>
    <book_published>2019</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43726586-an-american-sunrise?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="An American Sunrise" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1562026439l/43726586._SX50_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Joy Harjo<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.28<br/>
                                      book published: 2019<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/11/02<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
    </description>
  </item>
  <item>
    <guid><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8041069614?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></guid>
    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 02 Nov 2025 20:28:49 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>Doggerel: Poems</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8041069614?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>213395450</book_id>
    <book_image_url><![CDATA[https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1721681086l/213395450._SY75_.jpg]]></book_image_url>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<strong>Based on an extensive study of juxtaposition, <em>Doggerel</em> is a revelatory meditation on Blackness, masculinity, and vulnerability from one of poetry’s boldest voices.</strong><br /><br /><br />Reginald Dwayne Betts is our foremost chronicler of the ways prison shapes and transforms American masculinity. In <em>Doggerel</em>, Betts examines this subject through a more prosaic—but equally rich— dogs. He reminds us that, as our lives are broken and put back together, the only witness often barks instead of talks. In these poems, which touch on companionship in its many forms, Betts seamlessly and skillfully deploys the pantoum, ghazal, and canzone, in conversation with artists such as Freddie Gibbs and Lil Wayne.<br /><br /><br />Simultaneously philosophical and playful, <em>Doggerel</em> is a revelatory and faithful meditation on Blackness, masculinity, and those who accompany us on our walk through life. Balancing political critique with personal experience, Betts once again shows us “how poems can be enlisted to radically disrupt narrative” (Dan Chiasson, <em>New Yorker</em>)—and, in doing so, reveals the world anew.]]></book_description>
    <book id="213395450">
      <num_pages>96</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Reginald Dwayne Betts</author_name>
    <isbn>1324089253</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
    <user_read_at></user_read_at>
    <user_date_added><![CDATA[Sun, 02 Nov 2025 20:28:49 -0800]]></user_date_added>
    <user_date_created><![CDATA[Sun, 02 Nov 2025 20:28:49 -0800]]></user_date_created>
    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
    <user_review></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.06</average_rating>
    <book_published>2025</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/213395450-doggerel?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Doggerel: Poems" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1721681086l/213395450._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Reginald Dwayne Betts<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.06<br/>
                                      book published: 2025<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/11/02<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 02 Nov 2025 20:28:23 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title>Collected Poems 1947-1997</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8041068763?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>50316</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[“Taken all together, Ginsberg’s poems are X-rays of a considerable part of American society during the last four decades.” — The New Yorker This magnificent volume gathers the published verse of Allen Ginsberg in its entirety, a half-century of brilliant work from one of America’s greatest poets. A chief figure among the Beats, Ginsberg changed the course of American poetry, liberating it from closed academic forms with the creation of open, vocal, spontaneous, and energetic postmodern verse in the tradition of Whitman, Apollinaire, Hart Crane, Pound, and William Carlos Williams. Ginsberg’s raw tones and attitudes of spiritual liberation also helped catalyze a psychological revolution that has become a permanent part of our cultural heritage, profoundly influencing not only poetry and popular song and speech, but also our views of the world.]]></book_description>
    <book id="50316">
      <num_pages>1216</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Allen Ginsberg</author_name>
    <isbn>0061139742</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
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    <average_rating>4.32</average_rating>
    <book_published>2006</book_published>
    <description>
      <![CDATA[
      <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50316.Collected_Poems_1947_1997?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=rss"><img alt="Collected Poems 1947-1997" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1389836837l/50316._SY75_.jpg" /></a><br/>
                                      author: Allen Ginsberg<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.32<br/>
                                      book published: 2006<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/11/02<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 02 Nov 2025 08:06:56 -0800]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[Among the Burning Flowers (The Roots of Chaos, #0.2)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7434401362?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>222376983</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<b>With the awakening of fire-breathing wyrms, <i>Among the Burning Flowers </i>sees the first sparks of danger that threaten to consume the world in <i>The Priory of the Orange Tree.</i></b><br /><br />Take your first steps into the epic.<br /><br />Yscalin, land of sunshine and lavender, will soon be ablaze.<br /><br />It has been centuries since the Draconic Army took wing, almost extinguishing humankind.<br /><br />Marosa Vetalda is a prisoner in her own home, controlled by her cold father, King Sigoso. Over the mountains, her betrothed, Aubrecht Lievelyn, rules Mentendon in all but name. Together, they intend to usher in a better world.<br /><br />A better world seems impossibly distant to Estina Melaugo, who hunts the Draconic beasts that have slept across the world for centuries.<br /><br />And now the great wyrm Fýredel is stirring, and Yscalin will be the first to fall . . .<br /><br /><b>A story of human resilience in the face of dire circumstances, <i>Among the Burning Flowers</i> leads readers through the gripping and tragic events that pave the way for the opening of the million-copy bestseller The Priory of The Orange Tree.</b>]]></book_description>
    <book id="222376983">
      <num_pages>288</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Samantha Shannon</author_name>
    <isbn>1639736018</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>3</user_rating>
    <user_read_at><![CDATA[Sun, 2 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000]]></user_read_at>
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    <user_review><![CDATA[I was literally just thinking and wishing for another story in this world and now I’ve got one 😭😭😭🙏🏾<br /><br />Update after reading: it was pretty good! It’s simply a novella so there’s not much to expect in terms of complexity, but I thought the story was interesting. The tragedy of Yscalin and its downfall was quite fascinating to watch. While I still liked them, I wasn’t all that engaged by the characters (Marosa is the best one but it’s not really a competition) and the writing falls into telling not showing a lot of the time. I had a hard time getting emotionally invested or believing that Marosa and Aubrecht was an actually good romance just because they’re so disconnected. The emotional beats of the story didn’t land with me. It’s still a good novella though, and I had fun reading it. ]]></user_review>
    <average_rating>4.06</average_rating>
    <book_published>2025</book_published>
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                                      author: Samantha Shannon<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.06<br/>
                                      book published: 2025<br/>
                                      rating: 3<br/>
                                      read at: 2025/11/02<br/>
                                      date added: 2025/11/02<br/>
                                      shelves: <br/>
                                      review: <br/>I was literally just thinking and wishing for another story in this world and now I’ve got one 😭😭😭🙏🏾<br /><br />Update after reading: it was pretty good! It’s simply a novella so there’s not much to expect in terms of complexity, but I thought the story was interesting. The tragedy of Yscalin and its downfall was quite fascinating to watch. While I still liked them, I wasn’t all that engaged by the characters (Marosa is the best one but it’s not really a competition) and the writing falls into telling not showing a lot of the time. I had a hard time getting emotionally invested or believing that Marosa and Aubrecht was an actually good romance just because they’re so disconnected. The emotional beats of the story didn’t land with me. It’s still a good novella though, and I had fun reading it. <br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Sun, 12 Oct 2025 22:09:54 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title><![CDATA[The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale, #2)]]></title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7988670152?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>42975172</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[When the van door slammed on Offred's future at the end of <i>The Handmaid's Tale</i>, readers had no way of telling what lay ahead for her--freedom, prison or death.<br /><br />With <i>The Testaments</i>, the wait is over.<br /><br />Margaret Atwood's sequel picks up the story more than fifteen years after Offred stepped into the unknown, with the explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.<br /><br />In this brilliant sequel to <i>The Handmaid's Tale, </i>acclaimed author Margaret Atwood answers the questions that have tantalized readers for decades.<br /><br />"Dear Readers: Everything you've ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we've been living in." --Margaret Atwood<br /><br /><i>An alternate cover edition of ISBN 978-0385543781 can be found <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54245898-the-testaments" rel="nofollow noopener">here.</a></i>]]></book_description>
    <book id="42975172">
      <num_pages>422</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Margaret Atwood</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
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    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
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    <average_rating>4.17</average_rating>
    <book_published>2019</book_published>
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                                      author: Margaret Atwood<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.17<br/>
                                      book published: 2019<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/10/12<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Fri, 10 Oct 2025 15:36:07 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Academy of Outcasts</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7982906263?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>222708053</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<i>A brand new fantasy world from Larry Correia, bestselling author of Monster Hunter International! </i><br /><br /><b>All Oz Carnavon ever wanted was to become a master mage. </b><br />Except, to do so requires the natural gifts or wealth necessary to secure an appointment to one of the prestigious magical academies in the Core City at the center of the seven realms. Oz had neither.<br /><br />He was born without magical talent, serving in the elemental plane of fire, a nightmarish hellscape of treacherous lava and vicious monsters, where life is cheap, and escape is rare. But Carnavons never give up.<br /><br />When Oz fakes his death to get out of his family’s contract and crosses the Nexus gate to sneak into the Core, everything seems to be going according to plan… Until he gets blamed for an assassination attempt on the fire realm’s ambassador.<br /><br />Now, Oz must become a fugitive in a vast magical city, while trying to earn a place among the magical academies which have nothing but disdain for his kind.<br /><br />And the clock is ticking, because in one week, the most dangerous wizard in the realm of fire is coming to track him down and drag him back to hell. <br /><br /><b>Experience this epic new saga from LARRY CORREIA, award-winning author of <i>Monster Hunter International</i> and <i>Saga of the Forgotten Warrior. </i>This progression fantasy epic features</b><b> a D&amp;D-inspired setting split by portals into elemental realms, slow-growth power progression, magic academies, and unforgettable characters!</b>]]></book_description>
    <book id="222708053">
      <num_pages>424</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Larry Correia</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
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    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
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    <user_shelves>to-read</user_shelves>
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    <average_rating>4.35</average_rating>
    <book_published>2025</book_published>
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      <![CDATA[
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                                      author: Larry Correia<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.35<br/>
                                      book published: 2025<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/10/10<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
                                      ]]>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Fri, 10 Oct 2025 15:34:38 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Ironbound (Ironbound, #1)</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7982903505?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>223596217</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[<i>An action-packed progression fantasy epic from Andrew Givler, bestselling author of Soul Fraud.</i><br /><br /><b>In the Iron Empire, only the strongest are given a chance to Ascend.</b><br />As long as he can remember, Castor has wanted nothing more than to fuse with a Cor Heart. Made from an otherworldly metal, it would give him the ability to bind a Symbol and manipulate the elements.<br /><br />The day of trial has finally arrived—a chance for Castor to prove his worth. Only after winning the Empress’ blessing can he begin his life of adventure.<br /><br />When his chance is interrupted by a vicious attack, he finds his home in ruins and his family in mortal peril.<br /><br />Conscripted into the Legions, bound to a Symbol he never wanted, Castor must survive the Iron City, his enemies in the frozen North, and clandestine traitors within the rusting Empire itself.<br /><br />But more than anything, he wants revenge against those who took everything from him.<br /><br /><b><i>This is the first step of the rise of the Ironbound. </i><br /><br />Don't miss the start of this adrenaline-fueled Progression Fantasy Epic from Andrew Givler, bestselling author of <i>Soul Fraud</i>, and the creator of <i>Sigils</i>, a Youtube channel with 1.4+ Million Subscribers. It's Perfect for fans of <i>Arcane Ascension</i>, <i>Red Rising, </i>and <i>Will of the Many.</i></b>]]></book_description>
    <book id="223596217">
      <num_pages>609</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Andrew Givler</author_name>
    <isbn></isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
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    <average_rating>4.40</average_rating>
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                                      author: Andrew Givler<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.40<br/>
                                      book published: <br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/10/10<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
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    <pubDate><![CDATA[Tue, 09 Sep 2025 21:51:35 -0700]]></pubDate>
    <title>Transgender History</title>
    <link><![CDATA[https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7903859610?utm_medium=api&utm_source=rss]]></link>
    <book_id>2420983</book_id>
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    <book_description><![CDATA[Covering American transgender history from the mid-twentieth century to today, Transgender History takes a chronological approach to the subject of transgender history, with each chapter covering major movements, writings, and events. Chapters cover the transsexual and transvestite communities in the years following World War II; trans radicalism and social change, which spanned from 1966 with the publication of The Transsexual Phenomenon, and lasted through the early 1970s; the mid-’70s to 1990—the era of identity politics and the changes witnessed in trans circles through these years; and the gender issues witnessed through the ’90s and ’00s.<br /><br />Transgender History includes informative sidebars highlighting quotes from major texts and speeches in transgender history and brief biographies of key players, plus excerpts from transgender memoirs and discussion of treatments of transgenderism in popular culture.]]></book_description>
    <book id="2420983">
      <num_pages>208</num_pages>
    </book>
    <author_name>Susan Stryker</author_name>
    <isbn>158005224X</isbn>
    <user_name>⚔️ readerguy ⚔️</user_name>
    <user_rating>0</user_rating>
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    <average_rating>4.21</average_rating>
    <book_published>2008</book_published>
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                                      author: Susan Stryker<br/>
                                      name: ⚔️ readerguy ⚔️<br/>
                                      average rating: 4.21<br/>
                                      book published: 2008<br/>
                                      rating: 0<br/>
                                      read at: <br/>
                                      date added: 2025/09/09<br/>
                                      shelves: to-read<br/>
                                      review: <br/><br/>
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