en-US Sun, 13 Sep 2026 23:04:01 -0700 60 144 41 https://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 220239083 **A Guardian, Observer & Waterstones Nonfiction Book of 2024**

What begins as an eccentric English love story turns into one of the most dramatic adventures ever recorded...

Maurice and Maralyn couldn't be more different. He is as cautious and awkward as she is charismatic and forceful. It seems an unlikely romance, but it works.

Bored of 1970s suburban life, Maralyn has an sell the house, build a boat, leave England -- and its oil crisis, industrial strikes and inflation -- forever. It is hard work, turning dreams into reality, but finally they set sail for New Zealand. Then, halfway there, their beloved boat is struck by a whale and the pair are cast adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

On their tiny raft, their love is put to the test. When Maurice begins to withdraw into himself, it falls upon Maralyn to keep them both alive. Filled with danger, spirit, and tenderness, this is a book about human connection and the human condition; about how we survive -- not just at sea, but in life.]]> 256 Sophie Elmhirst 0593854284 Julie 0 3.67 2024
author: Sophie Elmhirst
name: Julie
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2026/09/13
date added: 2026/09/13
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]]> 241638260 160 Mac Barnett 0316607800 Julie 4 4.37 2026
author: Mac Barnett
name: Julie
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2026
rating: 4
read at: 2026/09/07
date added: 2026/09/07
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]]> 221164555 Yiyun Li’s remarkable, defiant work of radical acceptance as she considers the loss of her son James.

"There is no good way to say this," Yiyun Li writes at the beginning of this book.

"There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged . . . My husband and I had two children and lost them both. Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen. Both chose suicide, and both died not far from home."

There is no good way to say this—because words fall short. It takes only an instant for death to become fact, "a single point in a time line." Living now on this single point, Li turns to thinking and reasoning and searching for words that might hold a place for James. Li does what she doing "things that work," including not just writing but gardening, reading Camus and Wittgenstein, learning the piano, and living thinkingly alongside death.

This is a book for James, but it is not a book about grieving or mourning. As Li writes, "The verb that does not die is 'to be.' Vincent was and is and will always be Vincent. James was and is and will always be James. We were and are and will always be their parents. There is no now and then, now and later; only now and now and now and now." Things in Nature Merely Grow is a testament to Li’s indomitable spirit.]]> 192 Yiyun Li 0374617317 Julie 5 4.30 2025
author: Yiyun Li
name: Julie
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2026/09/02
date added: 2026/09/02
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]]> 235993074 Fourteen beloved authors celebrate the life-changing bond with their canine companions in this heartwarming essay collection edited by New York Times bestselling author and lifelong dog lover Alice Hoffman.

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

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

A love letter to the loyal companions who enrich our lives and teach us about empathy, joy, and unconditional love, this anthology is the perfect gift for dog lovers everywhere, offering a blend of laughter, tears, and inspiration that will resonate with anyone who has been fur-ever touched by the love of a dog.]]> 218 Alice Hoffman 1668209020 Julie 4 4.30 2026
author: Alice Hoffman
name: Julie
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2026
rating: 4
read at: 2026/08/29
date added: 2026/08/29
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]]> 32718027
But when Nahri accidentally summons an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior to her side during one of her cons, she’s forced to accept that the magical world she thought only existed in childhood stories is real. For the warrior tells her a new tale: across hot, windswept sands teeming with creatures of fire, and rivers where the mythical marid sleep; past ruins of once-magnificent human metropolises, and mountains where the circling hawks are not what they seem, lies Daevabad, the legendary city of brass, a city to which Nahri is irrevocably bound.

In that city, behind gilded brass walls laced with enchantments, behind the six gates of the six djinn tribes, old resentments are simmering. And when Nahri decides to enter this world, she learns that true power is fierce and brutal. That magic cannot shield her from the dangerous web of court politics. That even the cleverest of schemes can have deadly consequences.

After all, there is a reason they say be careful what you wish for...]]> 532 S.A. Chakraborty 0062678108 Julie 2 4.11 2017
author: S.A. Chakraborty
name: Julie
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2017
rating: 2
read at: 2026/08/28
date added: 2026/08/28
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]]> 59575939 A grand tour through the hidden realms of animal senses that will transform the way you perceive the world --from the Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of I Contain Multitudes.

The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world. This book welcomes us into a previously unfathomable dimension--the world as it is truly perceived by other animals.

We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth's magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and humans that wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile's scaly face is as sensitive as a lover's fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries which lie unsolved.

In An Immense World, author and acclaimed science journalist Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. Because in order to understand our world we don't need to travel to other places; we need to see through other eyes.]]> 464 Ed Yong Julie 3 4.45 2022
author: Ed Yong
name: Julie
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2026/08/26
date added: 2026/08/26
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]]> 61215384
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

The Dark Lord has risen, and as he unleashes hordes of Orcs to conquer all Middle-earth, Frodo and Sam struggle deep into his realm in Mordor.

To defeat Sauron, the One Ring must be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom. But the way is impossibly hard, and Frodo is weakening. The Ring corrupts all who bear it and Frodo’s time is running out.

Will Sam and Frodo succeed, or will the Dark Lord rule Middle-earth once more?]]> 432 J.R.R. Tolkien Julie 5 4.69 1955
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Julie
average rating: 4.69
book published: 1955
rating: 5
read at: 2026/08/13
date added: 2026/08/13
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]]> 239102127
Step into the extraordinary world of Mrs. Finnegan, Brighton's sharp-witted housekeeper from the 1830s. More than just a servant, Mrs. Finnegan is a reservoir of timeless advice, ready to tackle dilemmas from heartache and hair washing to the tricky business of repelling a bed bug invasion.

This isn't your average historical account. Painstakingly and begrudgingly edited by a "museum volunteer from Hell", Mrs. Finnegan emerges from these pages as the Boudicca of the serving classes and an authority on (almost) everything.

Discover the force of nature that is Mrs. Finnegan. It’s possible that your life, and the way you look at history, will never be quite the same.]]> 136 Bridget Whelan 1903709032 Julie 5 4.92
author: Bridget Whelan
name: Julie
average rating: 4.92
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2026/07/30
date added: 2026/07/30
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Delightful. Inspired by the book, I’ve found that a visit to The Regency Townhouse is the perfect accompaniment. I’m grateful for the becoming aware of some Brunswick Square history and the regency period and for the good laughs. The creativity of the writing sparks inspiration on many fronts.
]]> 61215372
The inspiration for the upcoming original series on Prime Video, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

The Two Towers is the second part of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic adventure The Lord of the Rings.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

Frodo and his Companions of the Ring have been beset by danger during their quest to prevent the Ruling Ring from falling into the hands of the Dark Lord by destroying it in the Cracks of Doom. They have lost the wizard, Gandalf, in a battle in the Mines of Moria. And Boromir, seduced by the power of the Ring, tried to seize it by force. While Frodo and Sam made their escape, the rest of the company was attacked by Orcs. Now they continue the journey alone down the great River Anduin—alone, that is, save for the mysterious creeping figure that follows wherever they go.]]> 448 J.R.R. Tolkien Julie 4 4.61 1954
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Julie
average rating: 4.61
book published: 1954
rating: 4
read at: 2026/07/30
date added: 2026/07/30
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]]> 77264 245 Barbara Kingsolver 0060917016 Julie 0 3.84 1989
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Julie
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at: 2026/07/25
date added: 2026/07/25
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]]> 61714633
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.

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.]]> 329 David Grann 0385534264 Julie 4 4.13 2023
author: David Grann
name: Julie
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2026/07/22
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]]> 213243949 A new Anne Tyler novel destined to be an instant classic: a socially awkward mother of the bride navigates the days before and after her daughter's wedding.

Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job—or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit.

But the true crisis lands when Debbie shares with her parents a secret she has just learned about her husband to be. It will not only throw the wedding into question but also stir up Gail and Max’s past.

Told with deep sensitivity and a tart sense of humor, full of the joys and heartbreaks of love and marriage and family life, Three Days in June is a triumph, and gives us the perennially bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer at the height of her powers

]]> 165 Anne Tyler 0593803485 Julie 3 3.49 2025
author: Anne Tyler
name: Julie
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2026/07/19
date added: 2026/07/19
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Reading Anne Taylor is like a nice cosy night by the fire and everything little thing is gonna be alright. Bookhug.
]]> 29344653
Three years later, he returns home and his murderous action has set the entire family - mother, brother, sister - on a path of intimate violence, as they enter a world of hushed commands and soundless journeys through the palace's dungeons and bedchambers. As his wife seeks his death, his daughter, Electra, is the silent observer to the family's game of innocence while his son, Orestes, is sent into bewildering, frightening exile where survival is far from certain. Out of their desolating loss, Electra and Orestes must find a way to right these wrongs of the past even if it means committing themselves to a terrible, barbarous act.

House of Names is a story of intense longing and shocking betrayal. It is a work of great beauty, and daring, from one of our finest living writers.]]> 272 Colm Tóibín 0241264936 Julie 3 3.54 2017
author: Colm Tóibín
name: Julie
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2026/07/08
date added: 2026/07/08
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I mostly enjoyed toibin’s version of Orestes’ and Electra’s experiences.
]]> 34454589 320 Margaret Atwood 1328879941 Julie 4 Most excellent writing. 4.26 1985
author: Margaret Atwood
name: Julie
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at: 2026/07/05
date added: 2026/07/05
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Most excellent writing.
]]> 201318464 From butcher's daughter in Communist Hungary to winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine 2023, this is the story of one woman's extraordinary determination through decades of obscurity and rejection – and her breakthrough discovery that saved millions of lives.'Riveting. A true story of a brilliant biochemist who never gave up or gave in' BONNIE GARMUS, author of Lessons in Chemistry'Anyone who has ever doubted that science, innovation and persistence can change the world should read this book' BILL GATES*An Amazon Best Book of the Year*Katalin Karikó began life as a butcher’s daughter in post-war Communist a hand-to-mouth existence in a single-room house of clay and straw with no running water. But even as a child she understood two crucial for those who can see it, the world is full of fascination and wonder, and whatever challenges she faced, she could overcome them with her boundless appetite for learning. Breaking Through is Karikó’s extraordinary memoir of how she achieved her dream of becoming a scientist, first in Hungary and then in the USA, and pursued her belief – despite so many telling her not to – that an elusive molecule called mRNA could transform our ability to prevent disease. For three decades she worked in obscurity, battling cockroaches in a windowless lab, enduring demotion, the derision of her colleagues, even threats of deportation. But in 2020, Karikó’s vision was spectacularly vindicated when her work made possible a staggering achievement that changed all our the production of the vaccines that protected millions from COVID-19, bringing an end to the pandemic and paving the way for similar vaccines against HIV, malaria and other life-threatening diseases. As frank, wise and fearless as Karikó herself, Breaking Through is a remarkable story of tenacity, friendship and loyalty, and one woman’s unshakeable commitment to her values. ‘A riveting testament to resilience and the power of unwavering belief’ JENNIFER DOUDNA, Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry‘The rousing story of a remarkable woman and her lifesaving contributions to medicine’ Publishers Weekly‘An outstanding memoir with a happy ending’ Kirkus Reviews]]> 320 Katalin Karikó 1529936381 Julie 4 4.64 2023
author: Katalin Karikó
name: Julie
average rating: 4.64
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2026/06/30
date added: 2026/06/30
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Inspiring. And a shame about university systems so caught up in making the system work they have completely lost focus and understanding of the science the system was built to support and to take forward. And how an exceptionally keen and accomplished scientist who happens to be a woman with an Eastern European accent is so invisible to the people running the framework for the future of scientific achievement and progress. Dumbfounding and brilliant.
]]> 123979539 446 Helen Czerski 1324006714 Julie 4 4.16 2023
author: Helen Czerski
name: Julie
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2026/06/27
date added: 2026/06/27
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I wish every human would read this book and understand it.
]]> 1173086 Homer 9626340312 Julie 0 3.80 -800
author: Homer
name: Julie
average rating: 3.80
book published: -800
rating: 0
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]]> 229752730 An unforgettable story about loss and new love from the bestselling author of Brooklyn and Long Island.

One snowy morning, after arguing with her husband, Miquel’s mother walks out from their home high up in the Pyrenees and does not return. With his younger brother stationed far away on military service and his father cast out by the people of the town, Miquel and his father are left to fend for themselves. Together they will be forced to battle the elements, and their resentment of each other, through the long winter.

Miquel’s desperate searching for his mother is only interrupted when Manolo, an orphaned servant boy from the next village, arrives to help out in the house. As Miquel is forced to confront the reality of his mother's absence, Manolo, with his silences and longing gaze, offers the promise of new love, and another kind of life.]]> 144 Colm Tóibín 1668212714 Julie 0 3.63
author: Colm Tóibín
name: Julie
average rating: 3.63
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2026/06/17
date added: 2026/06/17
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]]> 35959740
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or with the mortals she has come to love.]]> 393 Madeline Miller 0316556343 Julie 4 4.21 2018
author: Madeline Miller
name: Julie
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2026/06/12
date added: 2026/06/12
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]]> 61215351
In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as his elderly cousin Bilbo entrusts the Ring to his care. Frodo must leave his home and make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ring and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose.]]> 432 J.R.R. Tolkien Julie 0 4.53 1954
author: J.R.R. Tolkien
name: Julie
average rating: 4.53
book published: 1954
rating: 0
read at: 2026/06/02
date added: 2026/06/02
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]]> 17270655 An honor killing shatters and transforms the lives of Turkish immigrants in 1970s London

Internationally bestselling Turkish author Elif Shafak’s new novel is a dramatic tale of families, love, and misunderstandings that follows the destinies of twin sisters born in a Kurdish village. While Jamila stays to become a midwife, Pembe follows her Turkish husband, Adem, to London, where they hope to make new lives for themselves and their children.

In London, they face a choice: stay loyal to the old traditions or try their best to fit in. After Adem abandons his family, Iskender, the eldest son, must step in and become the one who will not let any shame come to the family name. And when Pembe begins a chaste affair with a man named Elias, Iskender will discover that you could love someone with all your heart and yet be ready to hurt them.

Just published to great acclaim in England, Honor is a powerful, gripping exploration of guilt and innocence, loyalty and betrayal, and the trials of the immigrant, as well as the love and heartbreak that too often tear families apart.]]> 342 Elif Shafak 0670921165 Julie 3 4.17 2011
author: Elif Shafak
name: Julie
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2026/05/31
date added: 2026/05/31
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]]> 18527222
Grandma Gatewood, as the reporters called her, became the first woman to hike the entire Appalachian Trail alone, as well as the first person—man or woman—to walk it twice and three times. Gatewood became a hiking celebrity and appeared on TV and in the pages of Sports Illustrated. The public attention she brought to the little-known footpath was unprecedented. Her vocal criticism of the lousy, difficult stretches led to bolstered maintenance, and very likely saved the trail from extinction.

Author Ben Montgomery was given unprecedented access to Gatewood’s own diaries, trail journals, and correspondence, and interviewed surviving family members and those she met along her hike, all to answer the question so many asked: Why did she do it? The story of Grandma Gatewood will inspire readers of all ages by illustrating the full power of human spirit and determination. Even those who know of Gatewood don’t know the full story—a story of triumph from pain, rebellion from brutality, hope from suffering.]]> 277 Ben Montgomery 1613747187 Julie 4 4.04 2014
author: Ben Montgomery
name: Julie
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2026/05/30
date added: 2026/05/30
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]]> 58687126
This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and beyond. This is the path I took to finding my purpose but also my voice in a world that didn’t always see me.

As I wrote Finding Me, my eyes were open to the truth of how our stories are often not given close examination. We are forced to reinvent them to fit into a crazy, competitive, judgmental world. So I wrote this for anyone running through life untethered, desperate and clawing their way through murky memories, trying to get to some form of self-love. For anyone who needs reminding that a life worth living can only be born from radical honesty and the courage to shed facades and be . . . you.

Finding Me is a deep reflection, a promise, and a love letter of sorts to self. My hope is that my story will inspire you to light up your own life with creative expression and rediscover who you were before the world put a label on you.]]> 304 Viola Davis 0063037327 Julie 3 4.52 2022
author: Viola Davis
name: Julie
average rating: 4.52
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2026/05/24
date added: 2026/05/24
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]]> 68428 What if the whole world were a dead, blasted wasteland?

Mistborn
For a thousand years the ash fell and no flowers bloomed. For a thousand years the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years the Lord Ruler, the "Sliver of Infinity," reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, divinely invincible. Then, when hope was so long lost that not even its memory remained, a terribly scarred, heart-broken half-Skaa rediscovered it in the depths of the Lord Ruler's most hellish prison. Kelsier "snapped" and found in himself the powers of a Mistborn. A brilliant thief and natural leader, he turned his talents to the ultimate caper, with the Lord Ruler himself as the mark.

Kelsier recruited the underworld's elite, the smartest and most trustworthy allomancers, each of whom shares one of his many powers, and all of whom relish a high-stakes challenge. Then Kelsier reveals his ultimate dream, not just the greatest heist in history, but the downfall of the divine despot.

But even with the best criminal crew ever assembled, Kel's plan looks more like the ultimate long shot, until luck brings a ragged girl named Vin into his life. Like him, she's a half-Skaa orphan, but she's lived a much harsher life. Vin has learned to expect betrayal from everyone she meets. She will have to learn trust if Kel is to help her master powers of which she never dreamed.

Brandon Sanderson, fantasy's newest master tale-spinner and author of the acclaimed debut Elantris, dares to turn a genre on its head by asking a simple question: What if the prophesied hero failed to defeat the Dark Lord? The answer will be found in the Mistborn Trilogy, a saga of surprises that begins with the book in your hands. Fantasy will never be the same again.]]> 541 Brandon Sanderson Julie 0 4.47 2006
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Julie
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at: 2026/05/16
date added: 2026/05/16
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]]> 180357146 From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala's Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.

A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. Imbued with humor, deep emotion, and the essence of life, it is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.]]> 715 Abraham Verghese 0802162177 Julie 3 4.32 2023
author: Abraham Verghese
name: Julie
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2026/05/16
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]]> 8389671 270 Alice Hoffman 0307393879 Julie 3 3.69 2011
author: Alice Hoffman
name: Julie
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2026/04/26
date added: 2026/04/26
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]]> 127280282 Discover the work of the greatest writer in the English language as you've never encountered it before by ordering internationally renowned actor Dame Judi Dench's SHAKESPEARE: The Man Who Pays The Rent—a witty, insightful journey through the plays and tales of our beloved Shakespeare.

Taking a curtain call with a live snake in her wig...

Cavorting naked through the Warwickshire countryside painted green...

Acting opposite a child with a pumpkin on his head...

These are just a few of the things Dame Judi Dench has done in the name of Shakespeare.

For the very first time, Judi opens up about every Shakespearean role she has played throughout her seven-decade career, from Lady Macbeth and Titania to Ophelia and Cleopatra. In a series of intimate conversations with actor & director Brendan O'Hea, she guides us through Shakespeare's plays with incisive clarity, revealing the secrets of her rehearsal process and inviting us to share in her triumphs, disasters, and backstage shenanigans.

Interspersed with vignettes on audiences, critics, company spirit and rehearsal room etiquette, she serves up priceless revelations on everything from the craft of speaking in verse to her personal interpretations of some of Shakespeare's most famous scenes, all brightened by her mischievous sense of humour, striking level of honesty and a peppering of hilarious anecdotes, many of which have remained under lock and key until now.

Instructive and witty, provocative and inspiring, this is ultimately Judi's love letter to Shakespeare, or rather, The Man Who Pays The Rent.]]> 400 Judi Dench 1250325773 Julie 5 4.47 2023
author: Judi Dench
name: Julie
average rating: 4.47
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2026/04/25
date added: 2026/04/25
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]]> 233411679 Life of Pi, a brilliant retelling of the Trojan War from the perspective of two commoners: an ancient soldier and a modern scholar.

The Psoad is an Ancient Greek epic in free verse that follows a goatherd’s son, Psoas of Midea, who leaves his wife and family to fight with the Greeks at Troy. This commoner’s story was lost to time—until Harlow Donne, a Canadian academic who has left his own wife and daughter behind to study at Oxford, discovers its relics nearly thirty centuries later.

As sole translator and interpreter of The Psoad, Harlow dedicates the poem and its footnotes to his daughter, Helen. Under his gaze, a personal message to his beloved child appears in the ancient text, like a palimpsest. Despite the thousands of years and hundreds of miles that separate Psoas and Harlow, a thread hasn’t frayed: the universal song of homesickness and regret, of love, ambition, and grief.

Son of Nobody takes readers from the plains of Troy to the halls of Oxford, from the classical to the contemporary, from ancient verses to modern footnotes. It is a dazzling, masterful feat of myth, history, and domesticity that explores how stories become facts, the price we pay to share them, and how we live—then, now, always.]]> 352 Yann Martel 132411813X Julie 3 3.51 2026
author: Yann Martel
name: Julie
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2026
rating: 3
read at: 2026/04/22
date added: 2026/04/22
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]]> 1985837


"A writer of considerable poetic gifts. Toibin's descriptions are enlivening."--Los Angeles Times Book Review


"An extraordinary document."--Entertainment Weekly]]> 304 Colm Tóibín 0679758550 Julie 5 3.86 1994
author: Colm Tóibín
name: Julie
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1994
rating: 5
read at: 2026/04/21
date added: 2026/04/21
shelves:
review:
It started off slowly. I wasn’t at all interested in reading about Catholicism, but forged ahead because I like Toibin’s writing. Because I like a good road trip tale, I was soon absorbed and delighted with the book. He has astute observational skills and his use of language is superb. Very relevant to today’s world situations. Great perspectives and good humour. I like him even much more now.
]]> 62365896 A charming, deeply moving novel about second chances, unlikely friendships, and the life-changing power of sharing stories.

Our Reasons meet us in the morning and whisper to us at night. Mine is an innocent, unsuspecting, eternally sixty-one-year-old woman named Lorraine Daigle…

Violet Powell, a twenty-two-year-old from rural Abbott Falls, Maine, is being released from prison after serving twenty-two months for a drunk-driving crash that killed a local kindergarten teacher. Harriet Larson, a retired English teacher who runs the prison book club, is facing the unsettling prospect of an empty nest. Frank Daigle, a retired machinist, hasn’t yet come to grips with the complications of his marriage to the woman Violet killed.

When the three encounter each other one morning in a bookstore in Portland—Violet to buy the novel she was reading in the prison book club before her release, Harriet to choose the next title for the women who remain, and Frank to dispatch his duties as the store handyman—their lives begin to intersect in transformative ways.

How to Read a Book  is an unsparingly honest and profoundly hopeful story about letting go of guilt, seizing second chances, and the power of books to change our lives. With the heart, wit, grace, and depth of understanding that has characterized her work, Monica Wood illuminates the decisions that define a life and the kindnesses that make life worth living.  . ]]> 280 Monica Wood 0063243679 Julie 5 4.13 2024
author: Monica Wood
name: Julie
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2026/04/14
date added: 2026/04/14
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]]> 123979706 320 Matthew Longo 0393540774 Julie 3 4.23 2024
author: Matthew Longo
name: Julie
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2026/04/13
date added: 2026/04/13
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]]> 231739656 No Friend to This House is an extraordinary reimagining of the myth of Medea from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Stone Blind, Natalie Haynes.

This is what no one tells you, in the songs sung about Jason and the Argo. This part of his quest has been forgotten, by everyone but me . . .

Jason and his Argonauts set sail to find the Golden Fleece. The journey is filled with danger, for him and everyone he meets. But if he ever reaches the distant land he seeks, he faces almost certain death.

Medea—priestess, witch, and daughter of a brutal king—has the power to save the life of a stranger. Will she betray her family and her home, and what will she demand in return?

Medea and Jason seize their one chance of a life together, as the gods intend. But their love is steeped in vengeance from the beginning, and no one—not even those closest to them—will be safe.

Based on the classic tragedy by Euripides, this is Medea as you've never seen her before . . .


]]> 369 Natalie Haynes 0063258447 Julie 5 4.02 2025
author: Natalie Haynes
name: Julie
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2026/04/07
date added: 2026/04/07
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]]> 202775002 272 Molly Aitken 0525658394 Julie 4 3.42 2024
author: Molly Aitken
name: Julie
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2026/04/03
date added: 2026/04/03
shelves:
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]]> 37424706 A transformative exploration of the power, purpose, and benefits of gatherings in our lives: at work, at school, at home and beyond.

Every day we find ourselves in gatherings, Priya Parker says in The Art of Gathering. If we can understand what makes these gatherings effective and memorable, then we can reframe and redirect them to benefit everyone, host and guest alike. Parker defines a gathering as three or more people who come together for a specific purpose. When we understand why we gather, she says -- to acknowledge, to learn, to challenge, to change -- we learn how to organize gatherings that are relevant and memorable: from an effective business meeting to a thought-provoking conference; from a joyful wedding to a unifying family dinner. Drawing on her experience as a strategic facilitator who's worked with such organizations as the World Economic Forum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the retail company Fresh, Parker explains how ordinary people can create remarkable occasions, large and small. In dozens of fascinating examples, she breaks down the alchemy of these experiences to show what goes into the good ones and demonstrates how we can learn to incorporate those elements into all of our gatherings. The result is a book that's both journey and guide, full of big ideas with real-world applications that will change the way you look at a business meeting, a parent-teacher conference, and a backyard barbecue.]]> 304 Priya Parker 1594634920 Julie 4 3.92 2018
author: Priya Parker
name: Julie
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2026/03/31
date added: 2026/03/31
shelves:
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Creative thoughts with life changing potential. Revisiting a must.
]]> 221315745 A riveting account of courageous resistance from the bestselling author of Balcony Over Jerusalem


On 24 February 2022, residents of Kyiv, Ukraine, woke to the sound of explosions and gunfire as Russian forces attempted to seize Hostomel Airport. It marked the beginning of the first land war in Europe since World War II. Under the leadership of the charismatic Volodymyr Zelensky, a militarised resistance and a civilian army of volunteers combined to defy Vladimir Putin.

By day, visitors to Kyiv might mistake it for any other charming European city. But when night falls, sirens wail and citizens sleep in bathrooms and bunkers to escape the persistent dangers of incoming missiles. This war is fought daily on both the front lines and the home front. Resourceful civilians - from old punk rockers and bikers to university professors and corporate brand managers - provide every bit of help they can, outwitting and outmanoeuvring the Russian army with drones, cyber tech and sheer ingenuity.

As Ukraine's long-term future captures the focus of global leaders in Russia, Europe and the US, veteran journalist and ABC Global Affairs Editor John Lyons takes readers into the heart of a nation under siege. He interviews Ukrainians who stand tall in the face of an increasingly brutal conflict and an uncertain future. These are the stories of ordinary civilians making extraordinary contributions, determined to fight back in every way possible to ensure the survival of themselves, their families, and the soul of their nation.]]> 320 John Lyons 1460717333 Julie 4 4.25
author: John Lyons
name: Julie
average rating: 4.25
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2026/03/26
date added: 2026/03/26
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Informative,inspiring, definitely worth a read
]]> 210300489
All his life, Sixth of the Dusk has been a traditional trapper of Aviar—the supernatural birds his people bond with—on the deadly island of Patji. Then one fateful night he propels his people into a race to modernize before they can be conquered by the Ones Above, invaders from the stars who want to exploit the Aviar.

But it’s a race they’re losing, and Dusk fears his people will lose themselves in the effort. When a chance comes to sail into the expanse of the emberdark beyond a mystical portal, Dusk sets off to find his people’s salvation with only a canoe, his birds, and all the grit and canniness of a Patji trapper.

Elsewhere in the emberdark is a young dragon chained in human Starling of the starship Dynamic. She and her ragtag crew of exiles are deep in debt and on the brink of losing their freedom. So when she finds an ancient map to a hidden portal between the emberdark and the physical realm, she seizes the chance at a lucrative discovery.

These unlikely allies might just be the solution to each other’s crisis. In their search for independence, Dusk and Starling face perilous bargains, poisonous politics, and the destructive echo of a dead god.

Sanderson expands his thrilling novella “Sixth of the Dusk” into a mythic novel of legends, lore, and warring galactic superpowers.]]> 465 Brandon Sanderson 1938570502 Julie 5 4.44 2025
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Julie
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2026/03/26
date added: 2026/03/26
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Good old fashioned Sanderson GOOD. sweet reading.
]]> 223001257 “Imagine, the letters one has sent out into the world, the letters received back in turn, are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle. . . . Isn’t there something wonderful in that, to think that a story of one’s life is preserved in some way, that this very letter may one day mean something, even if it is a very small thing, to someone?”

Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived, The Correspondent is a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person. It is about the hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age, and the mistakes and acts of kindness that occur during a lifetime.

Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.

Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has—a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.

Sybil Van Antwerp’s life of letters might be “a very small thing,” but she also might be one of the most memorable characters you will ever read.]]> 285 Virginia Evans 0593798430 Julie 5 4.41 2025
author: Virginia Evans
name: Julie
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2026/03/03
date added: 2026/03/03
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]]> 37190 A brave mouse, a covetous rat, a wishful serving girl, and a princess named Pea come together in Kate DiCamillo's Newbery Medal–winning tale.

Welcome to the story of Despereaux Tilling, a mouse who is in love with music, stories, and a princess named Pea. It is also the story of a rat called Roscuro, who lives in the darkness and covets a world filled with light. And it is the story of Miggery Sow, a slow-witted serving girl who harbors a simple, impossible wish.

These three characters are about to embark on a journey that will lead them down into a horrible dungeon, up into a glittering castle, and, ultimately, into each other's lives. What happens then? As Kate DiCamillo would say: Reader, it is your destiny to find out.


With black-and-white illustrations and a refreshed cover by Timothy Basil Ering. Aimed at children aged 7 and over, this book is a funny, moving, old-fashioned fairy tale in three parts.]]> 272 Kate DiCamillo 0763625299 Julie 0 4.07 2003
author: Kate DiCamillo
name: Julie
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at: 2026/02/24
date added: 2026/02/24
shelves:
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]]> 199125874 On France's golden Riviera, the wife of an artist gives him an ultimatum: her or me. The dazzling new novel from Sophie Haydock, author of The Flames.

This is the story of three women - one an orphan and refugee who finds a place in the studio of a famous French artist, the other a wife and mother who has stood by her husband for nearly forty years. The third is his daughter, caught in the crossfire between her mother and a father she adores.

Amelie is first drawn to Henri Matisse as a way of escaping the conventional life expected of her. A free spirit, she sees in this budding young artist a glorious future for them both. Ambitious and driven, she gives everything for her husband's art, ploughing her own desires, her time, her money into sustaining them both, even through years of struggle and disappointment.

Lydia Delectorskaya is a young Russian emigree, who fled her homeland following the death of her mother. After a fractured childhood, she is trying to make a place for herself on France's golden Riviera, amid the artists, film stars and dazzling elite. Eventually she finds employment with the Matisse family. From this point on, their lives are set on a collision course....

Marguerite is Matisse's eldest daughter. When the life of her family implodes, she must find her own way to make her mark and to navigate divided loyalties.

Based on a true story, Madame Matisse is a stunning novel about drama and betrayal; emotion and sex; glamour and tragedy, all set in the hotbed of the 1930s art movement in France. In art, as in life, this a time when the rules were made to be broken...]]> 384 Sophie Haydock 1473588685 Julie 5 3.86 2025
author: Sophie Haydock
name: Julie
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2026/02/20
date added: 2026/02/20
shelves:
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In an unconventional and surprising way, this work is a beautiful love story. When there is more than one person involved, there is always more than one side to the story.
]]> 141539710 0 Anna Reid Julie 0 currently-reading 4.60 1997
author: Anna Reid
name: Julie
average rating: 4.60
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/02/18
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 60177373 Legendary storyteller Stephen King goes deep into the well of his imagination in this spellbinding novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher—for their world or ours.

Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But he carries a heavy load. His mom was killed in a hit-and-run accident when he was ten, and grief drove his dad to drink. Charlie learned how to take care of himself—and his dad. Then, when Charlie is seventeen, he meets Howard Bowditch, a recluse with a big dog in a big house at the top of a big hill. In the backyard is a locked shed from which strange sounds emerge, as if some creature is trying to escape. When Mr. Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie the house, a massive amount of gold, a cassette tape telling a story that is impossible to believe, and a responsibility far too massive for a boy to shoulder.

Because within the shed is a portal to another world—one whose denizens are in peril and whose monstrous leaders may destroy their own world, and ours. In this parallel universe, where two moons race across the sky, and the grand towers of a sprawling palace pierce the clouds, there are exiled princesses and princes who suffer horrific punishments; there are dungeons; there are games in which men and women must fight each other to the death for the amusement of the “Fair One.” And there is a magic sundial that can turn back time.

A story as old as myth, and as startling and iconic as the rest of King’s work, Fairy Tale is about an ordinary guy forced into the hero’s role by circumstance, and it is both spectacularly suspenseful and satisfying.]]> 607 Stephen King 1668002175 Julie 3 4.04 2022
author: Stephen King
name: Julie
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2026/02/13
date added: 2026/02/13
shelves:
review:
Good writing except I found the regular build up and gratuitous descriptive horror events to be tedious. I would have liked more of it were it less.
]]> 222948074 With real-life echoes of SAS Rogue Heroes – this is an astonishing account of Europe’s biggest major conflict, told through the eyes of ragbag collection of foreign fighters

Three days after Russian tanks roll into Ukraine, President Volodymr Zelensky issues a desperate appeal for foreign military volunteers to help defend his country. Thousands answer the call from all over the some of them experienced soldiers, others novices who’ve never held a gun before.

Among their ranks are high-minded idealists, adventure-seekers bored with civilian life, and ex-criminals seeking redemption – all risking their lives against the world's most vicious superpower. Some flee at the first sign of trouble, others become heroes; many are killed, and a few turn their guns on each other.

This is their story – often terrifying, often tragic, sometimes comic, and sometimes glorious…]]> 320 Colin Freeman 000872248X Julie 5 A must read 4.34 2025
author: Colin Freeman
name: Julie
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2026/02/03
date added: 2026/02/03
shelves:
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A must read
]]> 23597544 Landmarks is Robert Macfarlane's joyous meditation on words, landscape and the relationship between the two.

Words are grained into our landscapes, and landscapes are grained into our words. Landmarks is about the power of language to shape our sense of place. It is a field guide to the literature of nature, and a glossary containing thousands of remarkable words used in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales to describe land, nature and weather. Travelling from Cumbria to the Cairngorms, and exploring the landscapes of Roger Deakin, J. A. Baker, Nan Shepherd and others, Robert Macfarlane shows that language, well used, is a keen way of knowing landscape, and a vital means of coming to love it.]]> 387 Robert Macfarlane Julie 3 4.24 2015
author: Robert Macfarlane
name: Julie
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2026/02/03
date added: 2026/02/03
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Good food for thought. Glad that i read it. Especially like the children experiment with perspectives.
]]> 40881649
Strange visitations, suspicious accidents, and a botched kidnapping convince Amelia that there is a plot afoot to harm Evelyn. Now Amelia finds herself up against an unknown enemy-and perilous forces that threaten to make her first Egyptian trip also her last . . .]]> 262 Elizabeth Peters Julie 3 Charming and fun. 1975. 3.96 1975
author: Elizabeth Peters
name: Julie
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1975
rating: 3
read at: 2026/01/30
date added: 2026/01/30
shelves:
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Charming and fun. 1975.
]]> 248
Big Sur is the portrait of a place one of the most colorful in the U.S. and of the extraordinary people Miller knew there: writers (and writers who didn't write), mystics seeking truth in meditation (and the not-so-saintly looking for sex-cults or celebrity), sophisticated children and adult innocents; geniuses, cranks and the unclassifiable.

Henry Miller writes with a buoyancy and brimming energy that are infectious. He has a fine touch for comedy. But this is also a serious book the testament of a free spirit who has broken through the restraints and cliches of modern life to find within himself his own kind of paradise.

]]> 400 Henry Miller 0811201074 Julie 0 Cool, interesting and overwhelming in intense ongoingness ]]> 4.03 1957
author: Henry Miller
name: Julie
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1957
rating: 0
read at: 2026/01/30
date added: 2026/01/30
shelves:
review:
DNF
Cool, interesting and overwhelming in intense ongoingness
]]> 243267858 But he finds himself questioning his priorities amid the open-hearted exuberance of people who have so little compared to his wealthy a powerful reconnection to the animals and wild places he loved as a child, and his growing friendship with Tibetan guru and neighbor, Rinpoche.
What if it is possible to live with the same ineffable lightness as the intriguing lama? Why is the joy of ubuntu – community – felt in the most improbable places? And could an orphaned elephant calf change his life?
Buddhism, nature, spirituality, and transcendent wisdom are woven into this compelling personal drama from the author of the globally bestselling Dalai Lama's Cat series.

Michie brings the Buddha's teachings to life through an engaging and enjoyable story showing the power that loving kindness and community have in creating the ideal conditions for awakening.
Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness and Real Change

This book, like the jewels Rinpoche speaks of, is to be treasured. a story that perfectly explains the infinite connections between humans, animals and nature so central to my own life here in Zimbabwe.
Sarah Carter, Co-Founder, The Twala Trust Animal Sanctuary

A powerful story around the rescue of Kadiki, a baby elephant. Wonderfully crafted around very real issues within Zimbabwe, the descriptions of people and places are impossible not to recognise. Magical!
Roxy Danckwerts, Founder, Wild is Life/Zimbabwe Elephant Nursery

A charming story of belonging and purpose, illuminated by the transformative practice of guru yoga.
Kimberly Brown, author of Happy Relationships and Steady, Calm, and Brave

From the first page to the last, readers will be immersed in this peaceful vista of stunning beauty, long-held customs … Africa “is a state of being as much as a place.”
Publishers Weekly (Booklife Review)]]> 263 David Michie 0645853143 Julie 3 4.31
author: David Michie
name: Julie
average rating: 4.31
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2026/01/14
date added: 2026/01/14
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]]> 237138100 It is never too late to build the life you’re seeking.

Cynthia Erivo learned the music to Wicked a decade before she needed it, not knowing that those same lyrics would change her life. Ten years later, she has the chance to perform those songs on a world stage, showing us that there is always time to keep discovering ourselves, that the journey of becoming is not a finite one.

In a series of powerful, personal vignettes, Cynthia Erivo reflects on the ways that she has grown as an actor and a person, the lessons she’s learned over years of performing, and how we are capable of so much more than we think.

Just as she had persevered through obstacles on the stage, working step by step, day by day, to align with music, lyrics and dialogue, so too did Cynthia fall in love with running. Through the simplicity of her steps and the beating of her heart, she found a way to fall into deeper sync with herself.

We all have hopes and dreams that we want to bring across the finish line, we all falter and take missteps, yet we keep moving forward towards that end goal. Cynthia is still running marathons, onstage and onscreen, in her work and in the city streets. Each challenge has allowed her to lean into the wisdom of her body, to understand and strive for a physical and mental balance. Because when we chase our deepest desires, each small step leads us closer to where we want to go.]]> 190 Cynthia Erivo 1035086034 Julie 3 4.12 2025
author: Cynthia Erivo
name: Julie
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2026/01/11
date added: 2026/01/11
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]]> 228587642 The Secret Commonwealth left off, this story finds Lyra alone in a city haunted by daemons, searching for her beloved Pan. Malcolm Polstead isn't far behind, searching for Lyra. And they are both racing toward the desert of Karamakan, following the trail of roses said to hold the secret of Dust.

Their allies and enemies are converging on the mysterious red building at the heart of the desert: Marcel Delamare and the military might of the Magisterium; the radical Men from the Mountains; scientists, scholars and spies; troops of witches and other people of the air. And awaiting them all is a previously unseen and chilling new threat that will change everything.

The intertwining odysseys of Malcolm and Lyra, their journeys both internal and external, will test their limits and challenge even their most dearly held beliefs.

As ever, Philip Pullman is using the language of fantasy to illuminate our world and to explore the deepest questions of what it means to be alive and awake to all the splendors and horrors around us. The extraordinary novels of The Book of Dust speak powerfully to today's readers and will take their place alongside the forever-favorites of His Dark Materials.]]> 657 Philip Pullman 0593306635 Julie 5 3.44 2025
author: Philip Pullman
name: Julie
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2026/01/11
date added: 2026/01/11
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]]> 22163
The canopy voyagers are young–just college students when they start their quest–and they share a passion for these trees, persevering in spite of sometimes crushing personal obstacles and failings. They take big risks, they ignore common wisdom (such as the notion that there’s nothing left to discover in North America), and they even make love in hammocks stretched between branches three hundred feet in the air.

The deep redwood canopy is a vertical Eden filled with mosses, lichens, spotted salamanders, hanging gardens of ferns, and thickets of huckleberry bushes, all growing out of massive trunk systems that have fused and formed flying buttresses, sometimes carved into blackened chambers, hollowed out by fire, called “fire caves.” Thick layers of soil sitting on limbs harbor animal and plant life that is unknown to science. Humans move through the deep canopy suspended on ropes, far out of sight of the ground, knowing that the price of a small mistake can be a plunge to one’s death.

Preston’s account of this amazing world, by turns terrifying, moving, and fascinating, is an adventure story told in novelistic detail by a master of nonfiction narrative. The author shares his protagonists’ passion for tall trees, and he mastered the techniques of tall-tree climbing to tell the story in The Wild Trees –the story of the fate of the world’s most splendid forests and of the imperiled biosphere itself.]]> 294 Richard Preston 1400064899 Julie 5 4.10 2007
author: Richard Preston
name: Julie
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2007
rating: 5
read at: 2026/01/03
date added: 2026/01/03
shelves:
review:
An exhilarating read. Ancient redwood forest canopies have been there (the few of them that remain) all my life and I knew so little about them. I love all of the information the author shares about them. The adventures of the admirable tree climbing scientists was wonderful. And who knew there is a genre called “ narrative nonfiction”? I didn’t. But i will be seeking it out now.
]]> 13438524 Flight Behavior takes on one of the most contentious subjects of our time: climate change. With a deft and versatile empathy Kingsolver dissects the motives that drive denial and belief in a precarious world.

Flight Behavior transfixes from its opening scene, when a young woman's narrow experience of life is thrown wide with the force of a raging fire. In the lyrical language of her native Appalachia, Barbara Kingsolver bares the rich, tarnished humanity of her novel's inhabitants and unearths the modern complexities of rural existence. Characters and reader alike are quickly carried beyond familiar territory here, into the unsettled ground of science, faith, and everyday truces between reason and conviction.

Dellarobia Turnbow is a restless farm wife who gave up her own plans when she accidentally became pregnant at seventeen. Now, after a decade of domestic disharmony on a failing farm, she has settled for permanent disappointment but seeks momentary escape through an obsessive flirtation with a younger man. As she hikes up a mountain road behind her house to a secret tryst, she encounters a shocking sight: a silent, forested valley filled with what looks like a lake of fire. She can only understand it as a cautionary miracle, but it sparks a raft of other explanations from scientists, religious leaders, and the media. The bewildering emergency draws rural farmers into unexpected acquaintance with urbane journalists, opportunists, sightseers, and a striking biologist with his own stake in the outcome. As the community lines up to judge the woman and her miracle, Dellarobia confronts her family, her church, her town, and a larger world, in a flight toward truth that could undo all she has ever believed.

Flight Behavior takes on one of the most contentious subjects of our time: climate change. With a deft and versatile empathy Kingsolver dissects the motives that drive denial and belief in a precarious world.]]> 436 Barbara Kingsolver 0062124269 Julie 4 3.80 2012
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Julie
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2012
rating: 4
read at: 2025/12/25
date added: 2025/12/25
shelves:
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]]> 267123 The Warden centers on Mr. Harding, a clergyman of great personal integrity who is nevertheless in possession of an income from a charity far in excess of the sum devoted to the purposes of the foundation. On discovering this, young John Bold turns his reforming zeal to exposing what he regards as an abuse of privilege, despite the fact that he is in love with Mr. Harding's daughter Eleanor. It was a highly topical novel (a case regarding the misapplication of church funds was the scandalous subject of contemporary debate), but like other great Victorian novelists, Trollope uses the specific case to explore and illuminate the universal complexities of human motivation and social morality]]> 336 Anthony Trollope 0192834088 Julie 0 3.76 1855
author: Anthony Trollope
name: Julie
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1855
rating: 0
read at: 2025/12/25
date added: 2025/12/25
shelves:
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]]> 221560082 400 Peter Greste 070226914X Julie 5 3.96
author: Peter Greste
name: Julie
average rating: 3.96
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/12/18
date added: 2025/12/18
shelves:
review:
Agonizing, alarming, urgently noteworthy
]]> 13549953
A woman was reading a book to a child on her knee.

“‘So the little boy went into the wood, and he met a witch. And the witch said, “You come home with me and I’ll give you a good dinner.”’ Now you wouldn’t go home with a witch, would you?”

Colin stood. “Young man. Do not go into the witch’s house. Do not. And whatever you do, do not go upstairs. You must not go upstairs. Do not go! You are not to go!”

Professor Colin Whisterfield spends his days at Jodrell Bank, using the radio telescope to look for his lost sister in the Pleiades. At night, he is on Alderley Edge, watching.

At the same time, and in another time, the Watcher cuts the rock and blows bulls on the stone with his blood, and dances, to keep the sky above the earth and the stars flying.

Colin can’t remember; and he remembers too much. Before the age of thirteen is a blank. After that he recalls everything: where he was, what he was doing, in every minute of every hour of every day. Everything he has read and seen.

And then, finally, a new force enters his life, a therapist who might be able to unlock what happened to him when he was twelve, what happened to his sister.

But Colin will have to remember quickly, to find his sister. And the Watcher will have to find the Woman. Otherwise the skies will fall, and there will be only winter, wanderers and moon…]]> 165 Alan Garner 000746326X Julie 0 3.67 2012
author: Alan Garner
name: Julie
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at: 2025/12/12
date added: 2025/12/12
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Ursula leguin gave a good review so i gave it a go. It as a strange read. Im glad i was introduced to a different kind of writing.
]]> 50485581
Ours is the age of contagious anxiety. We feel overwhelmed by the events around us, by injustice, by suffering, by an endless feeling of crisis. So, how can we nurture the parts of ourselves that hope, trust and believe in something better? And how can we stay sane in this age of division?

In this powerful, uplifting plea for conscious optimism, Booker Prize-nominated novelist and activist Elif Shafak draws on her own memories and delves into the power of stories to bring us together. In the process, she reveals how listening to each other can nurture democracy, empathy and our faith in a kinder and wiser future.]]> 96 Elif Shafak 1788165721 Julie 0 3.97 2020
author: Elif Shafak
name: Julie
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2025/12/11
date added: 2025/12/11
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]]> 19034943 La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust Volume One unfolded and saw the baby Lyra Belacqua begin her life-changing journey.

It is seven years since readers left Lyra and the love of her young life, Will Parry, on a park bench in Oxford's Botanic Gardens at the end of the ground-breaking, bestselling His Dark Materials sequence.

Now, in The Secret Commonwealth, we meet Lyra Silvertongue. And she is no longer a child . . .

The second volume of Sir Philip Pullman's The Book of Dust sees Lyra, now twenty years old, and her daemon Pantalaimon, forced to navigate their relationship in a way they could never have imagined, and drawn into the complex and dangerous factions of a world that they had no idea existed.

Pulled along on his own journey too is Malcolm; once a boy with a boat and a mission to save a baby from the flood, now a man with a strong sense of duty and a desire to do what is right.

Theirs is a world at once familiar and extraordinary, and they must travel far beyond the edges of Oxford, across Europe and into Asia, in search for what is lost - a city haunted by daemons, a secret at the heart of a desert, and the mystery of the elusive Dust.]]> 784 Philip Pullman Julie 0
I enjoyed recognising parallels with issues of current times and especially being with characters who fight against injustice and corruption with all they’ve got.

I won’t be able to breathe fully until I get to the end of the series.

legendary storytelling

Second reading December 2025:
I loved remembering aspects of Pulman’s writing that I love. Im looking forward to reading book three The Rose Fields when i can locate a reasonably priced copy. ]]> 3.98 2019
author: Philip Pullman
name: Julie
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2025/12/10
date added: 2025/12/11
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review:
Just like volume one of this Book of Dust series, I was unable to engage in my real life until I finished the book. I wasn’t on a Cambodian beach for this one but I still read it non-stop around necessary chores and human interactions.

I enjoyed recognising parallels with issues of current times and especially being with characters who fight against injustice and corruption with all they’ve got.

I won’t be able to breathe fully until I get to the end of the series.

legendary storytelling

Second reading December 2025:
I loved remembering aspects of Pulman’s writing that I love. Im looking forward to reading book three The Rose Fields when i can locate a reasonably priced copy.
]]> 81360324
Then, Chris made an impulsive decision. He set himself a to walk the entire coastline of the UK. He gave himself a few days to rustle up a tent and walking boots, then left for good with just a tenner in his pocket and two days’ worth of food. Little did he know at the time just how long it would take to cross the finish line – and the encounters lying ahead would turn his life around.

Almost six years later, Chris has navigated the West Coast, Northern Ireland, the hard-rock cliffs of Scotland and the perimeters of the Scottish Islands. He spent three months on an uninhabited island called Hildasay, with beloved dog Jet. It was there, the most barren his route had become, that he found within himself the pride and respect he needed – and his journey became all the more remarkable. Happiness and hope was just around the corner . . .]]> 329 Christian Lewis 1035006804 Julie 5 4.31
author: Christian Lewis
name: Julie
average rating: 4.31
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/12/10
date added: 2025/12/10
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review:
Very good book on many levels, including stunning descriptions of Scottish remote islands from very rare perspective; the power of nature in healing the mind, soul, body; the surprise and magic of the kindness and caring of strangers and the universal human, the healing power of dog love, inner strength in its many forms and the amazing things it can accomplish. My kind of treasure in a book.
]]> 29363335 "Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom — poets, visionaries — realists of a larger reality. . . ."

Words Are My Matter collects talks, essays, introductions to beloved books, and book reviews by Ursula K. Le Guin, one of our fore- most public literary intellectuals. Words Are My Matter is essential reading. It is a manual for investigating the depth and breadth of con- temporary fiction — and, through the lens of deep considerations of contemporary writing, a way of exploring the world we are all living in.

"We need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.” *

Le Guin is one of those authors and this is another of her moments. She has published more than sixty books ranging from fiction to nonfiction, children’s books to poetry, and has received many lifetime achievement awards including the Library of Congress Living Legends award. This year her publications include three survey collections: The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas; The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories; and The Complete Orsinia: Malafrena, Stories and Songs (Library of America).

* From “Freedom” A speech in acceptance of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.]]> 316 Ursula K. Le Guin 1618731343 Julie 0 Motivating 4.02 2016
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Julie
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2025/12/03
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Motivating
]]> 50265329
Dawn, miraculously, survives the crash, but so do all the doubts that have suddenly been raised. She has led a good life. Back in Boston, there is her husband, Brian, her beloved daughter, and her work as a death doula, where she helps ease the transition between life and death for patients in hospice.

But somewhere in Egypt is Wyatt Armstrong, who works as an archaeologist unearthing ancient burial sites, a job she once studied for, but was forced to abandon when life suddenly intervened. And now, when it seems that fate is offering her second chances, she is not as sure of the choice she once made.

After the crash landing, the airline ensures the survivors are seen by a doctor, then offers transportation wherever they want to go. The obvious option for Dawn is to continue down the path she is on and go home to her family. The other is to return to the archaeological site she left years before, reconnect with Wyatt and their unresolved history, and maybe even complete her research on The Book of Two Ways--the first known map of the afterlife.

As the story unfolds, Dawn's two possible futures unspool side by side, as do the secrets and doubts long buried beside them. Dawn must confront the questions she's never truly asked: What does a life well-lived look like? When we leave this earth, what do we leave behind? Do we make choices...or do our choices make us? And who would you be, if you hadn't turned out to be the person you are right now?]]> 416 Jodi Picoult 198481835X Julie 0 3.61 2020
author: Jodi Picoult
name: Julie
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2025/11/25
date added: 2025/11/25
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DNF. The book is missing something
]]> 23316537 New York Review of Books), Larry McMurtry chronicles the closing of the American frontier through the travails of two of its most immortal figures, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. Tracing their legendary friendship from the settlement of Long Grass, Texas, to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in Denver, and finally to Tombstone, Arizona, The Last Kind Words Saloon finds Wyatt and Doc living out the last days of a cowboy lifestyle that is already passing into history. In his stark and peerless prose McMurtry writes of the myths and men that live on even as the storied West that forged them disappears. Hailed by critics and embraced by readers, The Last Kind Words Saloon celebrates the genius of one of our most original American writers.]]> 196 Larry McMurtry 039335119X Julie 2 3.11 2014
author: Larry McMurtry
name: Julie
average rating: 3.11
book published: 2014
rating: 2
read at: 2025/11/25
date added: 2025/11/25
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]]> 23602562
In the familiar setting of Holt, Colorado, home to all of Kent Haruf's inimitable fiction, Addie Moore pays an unexpected visit to a neighbor, Louis Waters. Her husband died years ago, as did his wife, and in such a small town they naturally have known of each other for decades; in fact, Addie was quite fond of Louis's wife. His daughter lives hours away in Colorado Springs, her son even farther away in Grand Junction, and Addie and Louis have long been living alone in houses now empty of family, the nights so terribly lonely, especially with no one to talk with.

Their brave adventures - their pleasures and their difficulties - are hugely involving and truly resonant, making Our Souls at Night the perfect final installment to this beloved writer's enduring contribution to American literature.]]> 179 Kent Haruf 1101875895 Julie 4 Beautiful 3.91 2015
author: Kent Haruf
name: Julie
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2025/11/25
date added: 2025/11/25
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Beautiful
]]> 242916072 128 Mr Jim Tarran Julie 0 currently-reading 4.75
author: Mr Jim Tarran
name: Julie
average rating: 4.75
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/11/19
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> 43706466 An intensely powerful new novel from the best-selling author of The Bastard of Istanbul and Honour

'In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila's consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore. Her brain cells, having run out of blood, were now completely deprived of oxygen. But they did not shut down. Not right away...'

For Leila, each minute after her death brings a sensuous memory: the taste of spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the long-awaited birth of a son; the sight of bubbling vats of lemon and sugar which the women use to wax their legs while the men attend mosque; the scent of cardamom coffee that Leila shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each memory, too, recalls the friends she made at each key moment in her life - friends who are now desperately trying to find her. . .]]> 312 Elif Shafak 0241293863 Julie 0 4.09 2019
author: Elif Shafak
name: Julie
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2025/11/14
date added: 2025/11/14
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]]> 25814512
It’s 1939 and Mary, a young socialite, is determined to shock her blueblood political family by volunteering for the war effort. She is assigned as a teacher to children who were evacuated from London and have been rejected by the countryside because they are infirm, mentally disabled, or—like Mary’s favorite student, Zachary—have colored skin.

Tom, an education administrator, is distraught when his best friend, Alastair, enlists. Alastair, an art restorer, has always seemed far removed from the violent life to which he has now condemned himself. But Tom finds distraction in Mary, first as her employer and then as their relationship quickly develops in the emotionally charged times. When Mary meets Alastair, the three are drawn into a tragic love triangle and—while war escalates and bombs begin falling around them—further into a new world unlike any they’ve ever known.

A sweeping epic with the kind of unforgettable characters, cultural insights, and indelible scenes that made Little Bee so incredible, Chris Cleave’s latest novel explores the disenfranchised, the bereaved, the elite, the embattled. Everyone Brave Is Forgiven is a heartbreakingly beautiful story of love, loss, and incredible courage.]]> 418 Chris Cleave 1501124374 Julie 4 3.71 2016
author: Chris Cleave
name: Julie
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/11/12
date added: 2025/11/12
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He’s a good writer. I found myself resisting the sentimentality. He is good at it. Very close to the real.
]]> 205986531 ** THE ONLY GUT-HEALTH COOKBOOK YOU NEED FROM THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF FOOD FOR LIFE AND ITV LORRAINE’S GUT-HEALTH EXPERT **

30 plants a week. Calorie counting.
Fermenting. Ultra-processed foods.
But, how?

The Food For Life Cookbook takes the ground-breaking guidance in Tim Spector's #1 bestselling guide to the new science of eating well and, in over 100 delicious and achievable recipes created in collaboration with ZOE, the nutrition science company that he co-founded, shows just how simple and enjoyable it can be to adapt to a gut-friendly way of eating.

Shaped by Tim's own experience of transforming the way he eats, as well as common requests from readers and ZOE members, chapters include 15-minute meals, ideas for eating well when the fridge looks bare, and generous feasts and sweet treats for special moments with friends.

Packed with inspiration for delicious meals to feed you, your family and your microbiome, as well as tips for increasing plant diversity and science-based explanations for the nutritional benefits of the ingredients and recipes included, The Food For Life Cookbook is a must-have for every gut-loving home and kitchen.

Go with your gut. Join the food revolution.

PRAISE FOR FOOD FOR LIFE:
‘Life-changing’ DAVINA McCALL
'A fresh look at food' JAMIE OLIVER
‘A must-read’ Dr RUPY AUJLA
‘Fascinating’ NIGELLA LAWSON

‘No fads, no nonsense, just practical, science-based advice on how to eat well’ Daily Mail, Books of the Year

'A rigorously academic book that welcomes the layperson with open arms' The Times]]> 0 Tim Spector 1529937469 Julie 0 4.24
author: Tim Spector
name: Julie
average rating: 4.24
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2025/11/07
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]]> 195474144 From the bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway, A Gentleman in Moscow, and Rules of Civility, a richly detailed and sharply drawn collection of stories set in New York and Los Angeles.

The millions of readers of Amor Towles are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter six stories set in New York City and a novella in Los Angeles. The New York stories, most of which are set around the turn of the millennium, take up everything from the death-defying acrobatics of the male ego, to the fateful consequences of brief encounters, and the delicate mechanics of compromise which operate at the heart of modern marriages.

In Towles’s novel, Rules of Civility, the indomitable Evelyn Ross leaves New York City in September, 1938, with the intention of returning home to Indiana. But as her train pulls into Chicago, where her parents are waiting, she instead extends her ticket to Los Angeles. Told from seven points of view, “Eve in Hollywood” describes how Eve crafts a new future for herself—and others—in the midst of Hollywood’s golden age. Throughout the stories, two characters often find themselves sitting across a table for two where the direction of their futures may hinge upon what they say to each other next.

Written with his signature wit, humor, and sophistication, Table for Two is another glittering addition to Towles’s canon of stylish and transporting historical fiction.]]> 451 Amor Towles 0593296370 Julie 4 4.13 2024
author: Amor Towles
name: Julie
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/11/05
date added: 2025/11/05
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]]> 60764306 509 Tim Spector 1787334260 Julie 0 4.21 2022
author: Tim Spector
name: Julie
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2025/10/20
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]]> 222292420 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The unmissable new mystery in the Thursday Murder Club series from bestselling author Richard Osman, now streaming on Netflix

Who's got time to think about murder when there's a wedding to plan?

It’s been a quiet year for the Thursday Murder Club. Joyce is busy with table plans and first dances. Elizabeth is grieving. Ron is dealing with family troubles, and Ibrahim is still providing therapy to his favourite criminal.

But when Elizabeth meets a wedding guest who’s in trouble, kidnap and death are hot on their heels once more. A villain wants access to an uncrackable code, and will stop at nothing to get it. Plunged back into action once more, can the gang solve the puzzle and a murder in time?

Joyce’s daughter, Joanna, jumps into the fray to help the gang as they seek answers: Has someone kidnapped Nick? And what’s this uncrackable code they keep hearing about? Plunged back into action once more, can the four friends solve the puzzle and a murder in time?]]> 368 Richard Osman 0593653254 Julie 0 4.21 2025
author: Richard Osman
name: Julie
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at: 2025/10/20
date added: 2025/10/20
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]]> 62226126
An old friend in the antiques business has been killed, and a dangerous package he was protecting has gone missing.

As the gang springs into action they encounter art forgers, online fraudsters and drug dealers, as well as heartache close to home.

With the body count rising, the package still missing and trouble firmly on their tail, has their luck finally run out? And who will be the last devil to die?]]> 421 Richard Osman 0241512441 Julie 5 Top comfort reading world. 4.42 2023
author: Richard Osman
name: Julie
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/10/13
date added: 2025/10/13
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Top comfort reading world.
]]> 52668915
Neither plant nor animal, it is found throughout the earth, the air and our bodies. It can be microscopic, yet also accounts for the largest organisms ever recorded, living for millennia and weighing tens of thousands of tonnes. Its ability to digest rock enabled the first life on land, it can survive unprotected in space, and thrives amidst nuclear radiation.

In this captivating adventure, Merlin Sheldrake explores the spectacular and neglected world of fungi: endlessly surprising organisms that sustain nearly all living systems. They can solve problems without a brain, stretching traditional definitions of ‘intelligence’, and can manipulate animal behaviour with devastating precision. In giving us bread, alcohol and life-saving medicines, fungi have shaped human history, and their psychedelic properties, which have influenced societies since antiquity, have recently been shown to alleviate a number of mental illnesses. The ability of fungi to digest plastic, explosives, pesticides and crude oil is being harnessed in break-through technologies, and the discovery that they connect plants in underground networks, the ‘Wood Wide Web’, is transforming the way we understand ecosystems. Yet they live their lives largely out of sight, and over ninety percent of their species remain undocumented.

Entangled Life is a mind-altering journey into this hidden kingdom of life, and shows that fungi are key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel and behave. The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them.]]> 352 Merlin Sheldrake 0525510311 Julie 3 4.31 2020
author: Merlin Sheldrake
name: Julie
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/10/02
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]]> 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

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

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

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett 0385550367 Julie 4 4.38 2024
author: Percival Everett
name: Julie
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/09/23
date added: 2025/09/23
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]]> 30363088 A charming, clever, and quietly moving debut novel of of endless possibilities and joyful discoveries that explores the promises we make and break, losing and finding ourselves, the objects that hold magic and meaning for our lives, and the surprising connections that bind us.

Lime green plastic flower-shaped hair bobbles—Found, on the playing field, Derrywood Park, 2nd September.

Bone china cup and saucer—Found, on a bench in Riveria Public Gardens, 31st October.

Anthony Peardew is the keeper of lost things. Forty years ago, he carelessly lost a keepsake from his beloved fiancée, Therese. That very same day, she died unexpectedly. Brokenhearted, Anthony sought consolation in rescuing lost objects—the things others have dropped, misplaced, or accidentally left behind—and writing stories about them. Now, in the twilight of his life, Anthony worries that he has not fully discharged his duty to reconcile all the lost things with their owners. As the end nears, he bequeaths his secret life’s mission to his unsuspecting assistant, Laura, leaving her his house and all its lost treasures, including an irritable ghost.

Recovering from a bad divorce, Laura, in some ways, is one of Anthony’s lost things. But when the lonely woman moves into his mansion, her life begins to change. She finds a new friend in the neighbor’s quirky daughter, Sunshine, and a welcome distraction in Freddy, the rugged gardener. As the dark cloud engulfing her lifts, Laura, accompanied by her new companions, sets out to realize Anthony’s last wish: reuniting his cherished lost objects with their owners.

Long ago, Eunice found a trinket on the London pavement and kept it through the years. Now, with her own end drawing near, she has lost something precious—a tragic twist of fate that forces her to break a promise she once made.

As the Keeper of Lost Objects, Laura holds the key to Anthony and Eunice’s redemption. But can she unlock the past and make the connections that will lay their spirits to rest?

Full of character, wit, and wisdom, The Keeper of Lost Things is heartwarming tale that will enchant fans of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Garden Spells, Mrs Queen Takes the Train, and The Silver Linings Playbook.]]> 288 Ruth Hogan Julie 3 Not for me. Syrupy 3.70 2017
author: Ruth Hogan
name: Julie
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2025/09/20
date added: 2025/09/20
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Not for me. Syrupy
]]> 211050291 'A delicious guide to eating the healthy way.' - Tim Spector

'Real, good food.' - Yotam Ottolenghi

'This book will become your go-to, making eating well a joy, not a chore.' - Dr Rupy Aujla

-

Delicious, wholesome, life-friendly recipes to help you eat well, every day.

With a foreword by nutritionist Rhiannon Lambert, Real Healthy is a practical cookbook for time-poor people who want to cut back on ultra-processed foods, with healthy, veg-packed food that’s quick, convenient and tasty.

Research has shown that ultra-processed foods have been linked to high-blood pressure, heart disease and other serious illnesses, yet the average person in the UK gets a whopping 56% of their calories from UPFs. Here, Melissa Hemsley provides simple, doable and delicious recipes to help you tackle those tricky problem areas – on-the-go breakfasts, working lunches, snacks and sweet treats – as well as chapters on batch cooking, traybakes and 30 minute meals. She’s also includes tips on what to look out for when trying to avoid UPFs, making this your new go-to book for everyday cooking.

With recipes such as One-Pot Lazy Lasagne, Cherry Bakewell Granola and Take-To-Work White Bean Chilli, as well as ideas to help you stay on top of the week’s shopping and cooking, Real Healthy provides easy and nourishing alternatives to help you reduce the amount of UPFs that end up on your plate.

'Melissa untangles the complicated world of ultra-processed foods and puts us back into the calm and comforting space of simple, sublime and tasty cooking.' - Tom Kerridge]]> 0 Melissa Hemsley 1529940265 Julie 5 4.05
author: Melissa Hemsley
name: Julie
average rating: 4.05
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/09/18
date added: 2025/09/18
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]]> 209192698 In her long-awaited memoir, Ina Garten—aka the Barefoot Contessa, author of thirteen bestselling cookbooks, beloved Food Network personality, Instagram sensation, and cultural icon—shares her personal story with readers hungry for a seat at her table. 

Here, for the first time, Ina Garten presents an intimate, entertaining, and inspiring account of her remarkable journey. Ina’s gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices, and exquisite attention to detail. In her unmistakable voice (no one tells a story like Ina), she brings her past and her process to life in a high-spirited and no-holds-barred memoir that chronicles decades of personal challenges, adventures (and misadventures) and unexpected career twists, all delivered with her signature combination of playfulness and purpose.

From a difficult childhood to meeting the love of her life, Jeffrey, and marrying him while still in college, from a boring bureaucratic job in Washington, D.C., to answering an ad for a specialty food store in the Hamptons, from the owner of one Barefoot Contessa shop to author of bestselling cookbooks and celebrated television host, Ina has blazed her own trail and, in the meantime, taught millions of people how to cook and entertain. Now, she invites them to come closer to experience her story in vivid detail and to share the important life lessons she learned along the way: do what you love because if you love it you’ll be really good at it, swing for the fences, and always Be Ready When the Luck Happens.]]> 307 Ina Garten 0593799895 Julie 3 4.19 2024
author: Ina Garten
name: Julie
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/09/16
date added: 2025/09/16
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]]> 34066798
In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal. He is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances give him access to a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.]]> 495 Amor Towles Julie 4 4.27 2016
author: Amor Towles
name: Julie
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/09/16
date added: 2025/09/16
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]]> 42135029
Now ninety-five years old and telling her story at last, Vivian recalls how the events of those years altered the course of her life - and the gusto and autonomy with which she approached it.

Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love. Written with a powerful wisdom about human desire and connection, City of Girls is a love story like no other.]]> 470 Elizabeth Gilbert 1594634734 Julie 3 4.00 2019
author: Elizabeth Gilbert
name: Julie
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2025/09/13
date added: 2025/09/13
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]]> 9687312 256 Natalie Haynes 1590206371 Julie 5 3.78 2010
author: Natalie Haynes
name: Julie
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2025/09/02
date added: 2025/09/02
shelves:
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Despite some tedious sections, i recognise literary treasure in this writing which i will store and revisit. The epilogue and acknowledgments in particular.
]]> 56587382 A rich, magical new book on belonging and identity, love and trauma, nature and renewal, from the Booker shortlisted author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World.

Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas returns. He is a botanist looking for native species, but really, he’s searching for lost love.

Years later a Ficus carica grows in the back garden of a house in London where Ada Kazantzakis lives. This tree is her only connection to an island she has never visited -- her only connection to her family’s troubled history and her complex identity as she seeks to untangle years of secrets to find her place in the world.

A moving, beautifully written and delicately constructed story of love, division, transcendence, history and eco-consciousness, The Island of Missing Trees is Elif Shafak’s best work yet.]]> 354 Elif Shafak 0241434998 Julie 3 4.12 2021
author: Elif Shafak
name: Julie
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/08/21
date added: 2025/08/21
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]]> 199798179 A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace comedy, and an ingenious exploration of the nature of power and the potential for love to change it all: Welcome to The Ministry of Time, the exhilarating debut novel by Kaliane Bradley.

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and is, shortly afterward, told what project she’ll be working on. A recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible—for the body, but also for the fabric of space-time.

She is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with, assisting, and monitoring the expat known as “1847” or Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to be living with an unmarried woman who regularly shows her calves, surrounded by outlandish concepts such as “washing machines,” “Spotify,” and “the collapse of the British Empire.” But with an appetite for discovery, a seven-a-day cigarette habit, and the support of a charming and chaotic cast of fellow expats, he soon adjusts.

Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen haphazardly, fervently in love, with consequences she never could have imagined. Forced to confront the choices that brought them together, the bridge must finally reckon with how—and whether she believes—what she does next can change the future.

An exquisitely original and feverishly fun fusion of genres and ideas, The Ministry of Time asks: What does it mean to defy history, when history is living in your house? Kaliane Bradley’s answer is a blazing, unforgettable testament to what we owe each other in a changing world.]]> 339 Kaliane Bradley 1668045141 Julie 0 DNF at50% 3.51 2024
author: Kaliane Bradley
name: Julie
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/08/21
date added: 2025/08/21
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DNF at50%
]]> 115488298 'Thubten is a very generous and kind monk who writes with the lived honesty and humour of someone who has experienced the wisdom he shares. His writing is full of inspiration but also the pragmatism needed to form a sustainable practice. He clearly illustrates why we all need meditation and mindfulness in our lives.'- Benedict Cumberbatch We all go through hard times. We can experience moments when life feels like an uphill struggle, leading to unhappiness and stress. Perhaps we are feeling sad, anxious, or are challenged to deal with something bigger, such as a bereavement, a loss, a painful ending or a broken heart. It is during these moments when life feels difficult that we could do with some help with our thoughts and feelings.In HANDBOOK FOR HARD TIMES Sunday Times bestselling author of A Monk's Guide to Happiness Gelong Thubten teaches us to understand that happiness, kindness and resilience can be cultivated through reframing life's difficulties as opportunities for transformation. Meditation and mindfulness practices help us to access deep reserves of inner strength as we learn how to 'lean into' our suffering. Thubten suggests how we can find meaning in pain and discomfort, transforming deeply ingrained patterns of fear and resistance.As we discover how hard times can enhance the development of mindfulness, compassion and forgiveness, we can develop a fearless outlook on life and lasting, unshakeable happiness. This approachable and practical book, complete with meditations, is designed for modern times, and will be a valuable resource to anyone during times of struggle, but also during all times to encourage and build resilience and help us find inner contentment and peace.'A most qualified guide in the journey from darkness and turmoil towards inner peace and positivity.'ANNIE LENNOX]]> 224 Gelong Thubten 1529370639 Julie 0 4.38
author: Gelong Thubten
name: Julie
average rating: 4.38
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2025/08/16
date added: 2025/08/16
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Very good. Basic, straightforward, user friendly.
]]> 23995231 366 Paula McLain 0345534182 Julie 2 3.88 2015
author: Paula McLain
name: Julie
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2015
rating: 2
read at: 2025/08/14
date added: 2025/08/14
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]]> 46000520
But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it's too late?

Alternate cover edition can be found here .]]> 382 Richard Osman Julie 4 3.84 2020
author: Richard Osman
name: Julie
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2025/08/08
date added: 2025/08/08
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Funny. British. Tunbridge Wells! I like Richard Osman and was delighted to read his creative stab at novel writing. Very good.
]]> 222213730 FROM THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR – WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HISHAM MATAR

After an assassination attempt and in waning health, Naguib Mahfouz became more cautious in his twilight years. At the same time, in nightly dreams, his imagination began to roam his beloved city, Cairo, with a rare freedom.

In this collection of vivid vignettes linked together by the author’s precisely rendered nocturnal wanderings through Cairo, figures from Mahfouz’s personal life blend with his anxieties about Egypt’s political past and future.

Each dream is layered with philosophical and spiritual musings, hopes and disappointments. Over the course of the book, they build to a rich and complex picture of Mahfouz’s subconscious.

A master of both detailed realism and fabulous storytelling’ GUARDIAN]]> 113 Naguib Mahfouz 140598094X Julie 0 3.46 2015
author: Naguib Mahfouz
name: Julie
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at: 2025/07/29
date added: 2025/07/29
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]]> 213243915
“Nobody writes women the way Jojo Moyes does.” —Jodi Picoult

Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate. A broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart, and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in. Her career is in freefall and her love life is . . . complicated. So when her real dad—a man she has barely seen since he ran off to Hollywood thirty-five years ago—suddenly appears on her doorstep, it feels like the final straw. But it turns out even the family you thought you could never forgive might have something to teach you: about love, and what it actually means to be family.]]> 450 Jojo Moyes 1984879324 Julie 3 3.81 2025
author: Jojo Moyes
name: Julie
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/07/29
date added: 2025/07/29
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]]> 16243 The first book in Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie Mysteries series, called "The best mystery of the decade" by Stephen King, finds private investigator Jackson Brodie following three seemingly unconnected family mysteries in Edinburg.

Case one: A little girl goes missing in the night.

Case two: A beautiful young office worker falls victim to a maniac's apparently random attack.

Case three: A new mother finds herself trapped in a hell of her own making - with a very needy baby and a very demanding husband - until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape.

Thirty years after the first incident, as private investigator Jackson Brodie begins investigating all three cases, startling connections and discoveries emerge . . .]]> 310 Kate Atkinson 0316010707 Julie 3 3.78 2004
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Julie
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2025/07/24
date added: 2025/07/24
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Looking forward to reading the rest of the series
]]> 58777696 From the New York Times bestselling author of River of Doubt and Destiny of the Republic, the stirring story of one of the great feats of exploration of all time, and its complicated legacy.

The Nile River is the longest in the world. Its fertile floodplain allowed for rise to the great civilization of ancient Egypt, but for millennia the location of its headwaters was shrouded in mystery. Pharaonic and Roman attempts to find it were stymied by a giant labyrinthine swamp, and subsequent expeditions got no further. In the 19th century, the discovery and translation of the Rosetta Stone set off a frenzy of interest in ancient Egypt. At the same time, European powers sent off waves of explorations intended to map the unknown corners of the globe—and extend their colonial empires.

Two British men—Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke—were sent by the Royal Geographical Society to claim the prize for England. Burton was already famous for being the first non-Muslim to travel to Mecca, disguised as an Arab chieftain. He spoke twenty-nine languages, was a decorated soldier, and literally wrote the book on sword-fighting techniques for the British Army. He was also mercurial, subtle, and an iconoclastic atheist. Speke was a young aristocrat and Army officer determined to make his mark, passionate about hunting, Burton's opposite in temperament and beliefs.

From the start the two men clashed, Speke chafing under Burton's command and Burton disapproving of Speke's ignorance of the people whose lands through which they traveled. They would endure tremendous hardships, illness, and constant setbacks. Two years in, deep in the African interior, Burton became too sick to press on, but Speke did, and claimed he found the source in a great lake that he christened Lake Victoria. When they returned to England, Speke rushed to take credit, disparaging Burton. Burton disputed his claim, and Speke launched another expedition to Africa to prove it. The two became venomous enemies, with the public siding with the more charismatic Burton, to Speke's great envy. The day before they were to publicly debate, Speke shot himself.

Yet there was a third man on both expeditions, his name obscured by imperial annals, whose exploits were even more extraordinary. This was Sidi Mubarak Bombay, who was enslaved and shipped from his home village in East Africa to India. When the man who purchased him died, he made his way into the local Sultan's army, and eventually traveled back to Africa, where he used his resourcefulness, linguistic prowess and raw courage to forge a living as a guide. Without his talents, it is likely that neither Englishman would have come close to the headwaters of the Nile, or perhaps even survived.

In River of the Gods Candice Millard has written another peerless story of courage and adventure, set against the backdrop of the race to exploit Africa by the colonial powers.]]> 349 Candice Millard 052552407X Julie 5 3.77 2022
author: Candice Millard
name: Julie
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2025/07/20
date added: 2025/07/20
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Excellent all around. Compelling. Well researched, well written, well told.
]]> 198712875 30 Cheryl Strayed 1662517920 Julie 3 4.03
author: Cheryl Strayed
name: Julie
average rating: 4.03
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2025/07/19
date added: 2025/07/19
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]]> 219876684
Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

Told in Fredrik Backman’s singular witty style with sharply drawn characters and relatable antics, The Answer Is No is a laugh-out-loud portrait of a man struggling to keep to himself in a world that won’t leave him alone.]]> 68 Fredrik Backman 1662526520 Julie 0 3.91 2024
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Julie
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/07/16
date added: 2025/07/16
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]]> 58284121 The #1 Indie Next Pick, in the vein of the classic 84, Charing Cross Road and Meet Me at the Museum, this witty and tender novel follows two women in 1960s America as they discover that food really does connect us all, and that friendship and laughter are the best medicine.

When twenty-seven-year-old Joan Bergstrom sends a fan letter--as well as a gift of saffron--to fifty-nine-year-old Imogen Fortier, a life-changing friendship begins. Joan lives in Los Angeles and is just starting out as a writer for the newspaper food pages. Imogen lives on Camano Island outside Seattle, writing a monthly column for a Pacific Northwest magazine, and while she can hunt elk and dig for clams, she's never tasted fresh garlic--exotic fare in the Northwest of the sixties. As the two women commune through their letters, they build a closeness that sustains them through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy, and the unexpected in their own lives.

Food and a good life--they can't be separated. It is a discovery the women share, not only with each other, but with the men in their lives. Because of her correspondence with Joan, Imogen's decades-long marriage blossoms into something new and exciting, and in turn, Joan learns that true love does not always come in the form we expect it to. Into this beautiful, intimate world comes the ultimate test of Joan and Imogen's friendship--a test that summons their unconditional trust in each other.

A brief respite from our chaotic world, Love & Saffron is a gem of a novel, a reminder that food and friendship are the antidote to most any heartache, and that human connection will always be worth creating.]]> 208 Kim Fay 0593419332 Julie 3 4.07 2022
author: Kim Fay
name: Julie
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/07/10
date added: 2025/07/10
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]]> 202468422 From the Booker Prize finalist author of The Island of Missing Trees, an enchanting new tale about three characters living along two rivers, all under the shadow of one of the greatest epic poems of all time.

In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives.

In 1840 London, Arthur is born beside the stinking, sewage-filled River Thames. With an abusive, alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother, Arthur’s only chance of escaping destitution is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a leading publisher, Arthur’s world opens up far beyond the slums, and one book in particular catches his interest: Nineveh and Its Remains.

In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a ten-year-old Yazidi girl, is diagnosed with a rare disorder that will soon cause her to go deaf. Before that happens, her grandmother is determined to baptize her in a sacred Iraqi temple. But with the rising presence of ISIS and the destruction of the family’s ancestral lands along the Tigris, Narin is running out of time.

In 2018 London, the newly divorced Zaleekah, a hydrologist, moves into a houseboat on the Thames to escape her husband. Orphaned and raised by her wealthy uncle, Zaleekah had made the decision to take her own life in one month, until a curious book about her homeland changes everything.

A dazzling feat of storytelling, There Are Rivers in the Sky entwines these outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which remanifests across the centuries. Both a source of life and harbinger of death, rivers—the Tigris and the Thames—transcend history, transcend fate: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”]]> 446 Elif Shafak 0593801717 Julie 5 4.31 2024
author: Elif Shafak
name: Julie
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/07/06
date added: 2025/07/06
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]]> 55886800 Read the final book in Stephen Fry's acclaimed internationally bestselling Greek Myths series telling the story of the Odyssey—Can a hero find his way home?

Follow Odysseus after he leaves the fallen city of Troy and takes ten long dramatic years—battling monsters, the temptations of goddesses and suffering the curse of Poseidon—to voyage home to his wife Penelope on the island of Ithaca.]]> 448 Stephen Fry 1405948418 Julie 4 4.28 2024
author: Stephen Fry
name: Julie
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/07/04
date added: 2025/07/04
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Fry is such a good story teller. Smiles throughout.
]]> 165030
But nothing in Anna's life is that simple anymore... Not only is her return to Manhattan complicated by her physical and emotional scars – but Aidan seems to have vanished. Is it time for Anna to move on? Is it even possible for her to move on? A motley group of misfits, an earth-shattering revelation, two births and one very weird wedding might help Anna find some answers – and change her life forever.]]> 456 Marian Keyes 0061240850 Julie 3 3.94 2006
author: Marian Keyes
name: Julie
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2025/06/22
date added: 2025/06/22
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]]> 60531420
Running. Putting distance between himself and the relentless Night Brigade has been Nomad’s strategy for years. Staying one or two steps ahead of his pursuers by skipping through the Cosmere from one world to the next.

But now, his powers too depleted to escape, Nomad finds himself trapped on Canticle, a planet that will kill anyone who doesn’t keep moving. Fleeing the fires of a sunrise that melts the very stones, he is instantly caught up in the struggle between a heartless tyrant and the brave rebels who defy him.

Failure means a quick death, incinerated by the sun… or a lifetime as a mindless slave. Tormented by the consequences of his past, Nomad must fight not only for his survival―but also for his very soul.]]> 447 Brandon Sanderson 1938570391 Julie 4 4.24 2023
author: Brandon Sanderson
name: Julie
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/06/09
date added: 2025/06/09
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]]> 123136728 Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below. We glimpse moments of their earthly lives through brief communications with family, their photos and talismans; we watch them whip up dehydrated meals, float in gravity-free sleep, and exercise in regimented routines to prevent atrophying muscles; we witness them form bonds that will stand between them and utter solitude. Most of all, we are with them as they behold and record their silent blue planet. Their experiences of sixteen sunrises and sunsets and the bright, blinking constellations of the galaxy are at once breathtakingly awesome and surprisingly intimate.

Profound and contemplative, Orbital is a moving elegy to our environment and planet.]]> 224 Samantha Harvey 0802161545 Julie 5 3.44 2023
author: Samantha Harvey
name: Julie
average rating: 3.44
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/06/05
date added: 2025/06/06
shelves:
review:
Perfect mind Warp material. . Life enhancing perspective foods.
]]> 46014983
These surprises, and the ways they throw Micah's meticulously organized life off-kilter, risk changing him forever.]]> 178 Anne Tyler 0525658416 Julie 3 3.53 2020
author: Anne Tyler
name: Julie
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/30
date added: 2025/05/30
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]]> 57109107 A master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America

In June 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett’s intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California, where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden’s car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the city of New York.

Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles’s third novel will satisfy fans of his multilayered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.]]> 576 Amor Towles 0735222355 Julie 5 4.17 2021
author: Amor Towles
name: Julie
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/25
date added: 2025/05/25
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]]> 195430688
Stella reached for an oyster, tipped her head and tossed it back. It was cool and slippery, the flavor so briny it was like diving into the ocean... Oysters, she thought, where have they been all my life?

When her estranged mother dies, Stella is left with an unusual a one-way plane ticket and a note reading Go to Paris . But Stella is hardly cut out for adventure; a childhood trauma has kept her confined to the strict routines of her comfort zone. When her boss encourages her to take time off, Stella resigns herself to honoring her mother’s last wishes.

Alone in a foreign city, Stella falls into old habits, living cautiously and frugally. Then she stumbles across a vintage store where she tries on a fabulous Dior dress. The shopkeeper insists that this dress was meant for Stella and, for the first time in her life, Stella does something impulsive. She buys the dress and together they embark on an adventure.

Her first iconic brasserie Les Deux Magots, where Stella tastes her first oysters, and then meets an octogenarian art collector who decides to take her under his wing. As Jules introduces her to a veritable who’s who of the 1980s Paris literary, art, and culinary worlds, Stella begins to understand what it might mean to live a larger life.

As weeks—and many decadent meals—go by, Stella ends up living as a “tumbleweed” at famed bookstore Shakespeare & Company, uncovers a hundred-year-old mystery in a Manet painting, and discovers a passion for food that may be connected to her past. A feast for the senses, this novel is a testament to living deliciously, taking chances, and finding your true home.]]> 272 Ruth Reichl 0812996305 Julie 4 Delightful. 3.65 2024
author: Ruth Reichl
name: Julie
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/05/18
date added: 2025/05/18
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Delightful.
]]> 14249 Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and struggling small farms of southern Appalachia.

From her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin, Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. She is caught off-guard by a young hunter who invades her most private spaces and confounds her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, Lusa Maluf Landowski, a bookish city girl turned farmer's wife, finds herself unexpectedly marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land that has become her own. And a few more miles down the road, a pair of elderly feuding neighbors tend their respective farms and wrangle about God, pesticides, and the possibilities of a future neither of them expected.

Over the course of one humid summer, these characters find their connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with whom they share a place. Prodigal Summer demonstrates a balance of narrative, drama and ideas that is characteristic of Barbara Kingsolver's finest work.]]> 444 Barbara Kingsolver 0060959037 Julie 3 4.04 2000
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Julie
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2000
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/11
date added: 2025/05/11
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]]> 33376821
Until, that is, Tokue comes into his life. An elderly woman with disfigured hands and a troubled past, she makes the best sweet bean paste Sentaro has ever tasted. The unlikeliest of friendships blossoms, but it will take all of their resolve – and plenty of pancakes – to protect themselves when Tokue's dark secret comes to light.]]> 224 Durian Sukegawa 1786071959 Julie 3 4.05 2013
author: Durian Sukegawa
name: Julie
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/08
date added: 2025/05/08
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]]> 226476026
The story was first published in the multi-award-winning collection Dreaming Again, edited by Jack Dann. Having written the story, Isobelle could never put the work she had created to bed. The dreamscape beckoned and led her to write Comes the Night which was longlisted for the 2024 Indie Awards in the YA category.]]> Isobelle Carmody Julie 0 3.21
author: Isobelle Carmody
name: Julie
average rating: 3.21
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2025/05/08
date added: 2025/05/08
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]]> 57307971 The final novel from a great American storyteller.

Donal Cameron is being raised by his grandmother, the cook at the legendary Double W ranch in Ivan Doig’s beloved Two Medicine Country of the Montana Rockies, a landscape that gives full rein to an eleven-year-old’s imagination. But when Gram has to have surgery for “female trouble” in the summer of 1951, all she can think to do is to ship Donal off to her sister in faraway Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

There, Donal is in for a rude surprise: Aunt Kate–bossy, opinionated, argumentative, and tyrannical—is nothing like her sister. She henpecks her good-natured husband, Herman the German, and Donal can’t seem to get on her good side either. After one contretemps too many, Kate  packs him back to the authorities in Montana on the next Greyhound.

But as it turns out, Donal isn’t traveling solo: Herman the German has decided to fly the coop with him. In the immortal American tradition, the pair light out for the territory together, meeting a classic Doigian ensemble of characters and having rollicking misadventures along the way.

Charming, wise, and slyly funny, Last Bus to Wisdom is a last sweet gift from a writer whose books have bestowed untold pleasure on countless readers. ]]> Ivan Doig Julie 5 4.01 2015
author: Ivan Doig
name: Julie
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2025/05/02
date added: 2025/05/02
shelves:
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I love a good on the road tale.
]]>