Eggplant.place

107d

📚 Girl Warrior by: Joy Harjo

An inspirational work of wisdom, warmth, and generosity from a three-term US poet laureate.

To know ourselves is the most profound and difficult endeavor. Though we are all made of the same questions, we have individual routes to the answers, or to reframing the questions. Why is there evil in the world? Why do people suf...

https://bookblabla.com/book/girl-warrior

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #biographyautobiography #indigenous

An inspirational work of wisdom, warmth, and generosity from a three-term US poet laureate.

To know ourselves is the most profound and difficult endeavor. Though we are all made of the same questions, we have individual routes to the answers, or to reframing the questions. Why is there evil in the world? Why do people suffer, and some more than others? Why are we here? What are we doing here? What happens after death? Does anything mean anything at all? Who am I and what does it matter?” writes Joy Harjo, renowned poet and activist, in this profound work about the struggles, challenges, and joys of coming of age.

In her best-selling memoir Poet Warrior, Harjo led readers through her lifelong process of artistic evolution. In Girl Warrior, she speaks directly to Native girls and women, sharing stories about her own coming of age to bring renewed attention to the pivotal moments of becoming including forgiveness, failure, falling, rising up, and honoring our vast family of beings.

Informed by her own experiences and those of her ancestors, Harjo offers inspiration and insight for navigating the many challenges of maturation. She grapples with parents, friendships, love, and loss. She guides young readers toward painting, poetry, and music as powerful tools for developing their own ethical sensibility. As Harjo demonstrates, the act of making is an essential part of who we are, a means of inviting the past into the present and a critical tool young women can use to sh

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

105d

📚 Wonder by: R. J. Palacio

I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse.

August Pullman was born with a facial difference that, up until now, has prevented him from going to a mainstream school. Starting 5th grade at Beecher Prep, he wants nothing more than to be treated as an ordinary kid—but his new classmates can’t get...

https://bookblabla.com/book/wonder

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #juvenilefiction #disabilities

I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse.

August Pullman was born with a facial difference that, up until now, has prevented him from going to a mainstream school. Starting 5th grade at Beecher Prep, he wants nothing more than to be treated as an ordinary kid—but his new classmates can’t get past Auggie’s extraordinary face. Beginning from Auggie’s point of view and expanding to include his classmates, his sister, her boyfriend, and others, the perspectives converge to form a portrait of one community’s struggle with empathy, compassion, and acceptance. In a world where bullying among young people is an epidemic, this is a refreshing new narrative full of heart and hope.

R.J. Palacio has called her debut novel “a meditation on kindness” —indeed, every reader will come away with a greater appreciation for the simple courage of friendship. Auggie is a hero to root for, a diamond in the rough who proves that you can’t blend in when you were born to stand out.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. A PARADE BEST KIDS BOOK OF ALL TIME. Millions of people have fallen in love with Auggie Pullman, an ordinary boy with an extraordinary face—who shows us that kindness brings us together no matter how far apart we are. Read the book that inspired the Choose Kind movement, a major motion picture, and the critically acclaimed graphic novel White Bird.

And don't miss R.J. Palacio's highly anticipated new novel, Pony, available

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

107d

I'm dead 😂

@libraries @library @books @bookstodon @humor @humor@lemmy.world @aiop

#Library #LibraryMemes #Memes #Libraries #Librarians #Humor #Humour
#Bookstodon #Bookworm #Bookwyrm #BookLove

Me: No serial killer will ever lure me into their murder van. I' m too smart
for that.
Murderer: Photo of a parked van with the backdoors open showing a nicely lit up space with bookshelves along the wall.

ALT

4 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

73d

📚 Fundamentally by: Nussaibah Younis

When Nadia Amin, a witty and bighearted PhD, publishes an article on deradicalization, everything changes. The United Nations comes calling with an opportunity to put her theory into practice and lead a rehabilitation program for women caught in the crosshairs of harmful ideology. And why n...

https://bookblabla.com/book/fundamentally

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #politicalfiction #humorous #generalfiction #women

When Nadia Amin, a witty and bighearted PhD, publishes an article on deradicalization, everything changes. The United Nations comes calling with an opportunity to put her theory into practice and lead a rehabilitation program for women caught in the crosshairs of harmful ideology. And why not? Abandoned by her mother and devastated by unrequited love, she leaps at the chance.

In Iraq, Nadia quickly realizes she’s in over her head. The UN is a mess of competing interests, and her team consists of Goody Two-shoes Sherri who never passes up an opportunity to remind Nadia of her objections; and Pierre, a snippy Frenchman who has no qualms about perpetually scrolling through Grindr. But then Nadia meets Sara, a hilarious, foul-mouthed East Londoner who was pulled into radicalism at just fifteen. The two are kindred spirits, and Nadia vows to get Sara home.

As the rehabilitation program picks up traction, Sara reveals a secret that upends everything, forcing Nadia to make a drastic choice. In the fallout, Nadia’s brown-savior fantasies crumble, leaving her to wonder if she can save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.

A fierce, wildly funny, and razor-sharp exploration of radicalism, family, and the quest for belonging, Fundamentally boldly inspects one of the defining controversies of our age and introduces a fearless new voice in contemporary fiction.

A wickedly funny and audacious debut novel following an academic who flees from heartbreak and lands in Iraq wi

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

107d

📚 Run for the Hills by: Kevin Wilson

Ever since her dad left them twenty years ago, it’s been just Madeline Hill and her mom on their farm in Coalfield, Tennessee. While it’s a bit lonely, she sometimes admits, and a less exciting life than what she imagined for herself, it’s mostly okay. Mostly.

Then one...

https://bookblabla.com/book/run-for-the-hills

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #literaryfiction #southernfiction #familylife #generalfiction

Ever since her dad left them twenty years ago, it’s been just Madeline Hill and her mom on their farm in Coalfield, Tennessee. While it’s a bit lonely, she sometimes admits, and a less exciting life than what she imagined for herself, it’s mostly okay. Mostly.

Then one day Reuben Hill pulls up in a PT Cruiser and informs Madeline that he believes she’s his half sister. Reuben—left behind by their dad thirty years ago—has hired a detective to track down their father and a string of other half siblings. And he wants Mad to leave her home and join him for the craziest kind of road trip imaginable to find them all.
As Mad and Rube—and eventually the others—share stories of their father, who behaved so differently in each life he created, they begin to question what he was looking for with every new incarnation. Who are they to one another? What kind of man will they find? And how will these new relationships change Mad’s previously solitary life on the farm?

A touching and generous romp of a novel... Wilson makes a bold and convincing case that every real family is one you have to find and, at some point, choose, even if it’s the one you’re born into. New York Times Book Review.

An unexpected road trip across America brings a family together, in this raucous and moving new novel from the bestselling author of Nothing to See Here.

Infused with deadpan wit, zany hijinks, and enormous heart, Run for the Hills is a sibling story like no other—a

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

74d

📚 The Names by: Florence Knapp

It is 1987, and in the aftermath of a great storm, Cora sets out with her nine-year-old daughter to register the birth of her son. Her husband intends for her to follow a long-standing family tradition and call the baby after him. But when faced with the decision, Cora hesitates. ...

https://bookblabla.com/book/the-names

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #generalfiction #familylife #multigenerationalfiction #worldliterature

It is 1987, and in the aftermath of a great storm, Cora sets out with her nine-year-old daughter to register the birth of her son. Her husband intends for her to follow a long-standing family tradition and call the baby after him. But when faced with the decision, Cora hesitates. Going against his wishes is a risk that will have consequences, but is it right for her child to inherit his name from generations of domineering men? The choice she makes in this moment will shape the course of their lives.

Seven years later, her son is Bear, a name chosen by his sister, and one that will prove as cataclysmic as the storm from which it emerged. Or he is Julian, the name his mother set her heart on, believing it will enable him to become his own person. Or he is Gordon, named after his father and raised in his cruel image - but is there still a chance to break the mould?

Powerfully moving and full of hope, this is the story of three names, three versions of a life, and the infinite possibilities that a single decision can spark. It is the story of one family, and love's endless capacity to endure, no matter what fate has in store.

********

A once-in-a-generation debut from a major new talent, The Names is the story of three names, three versions of a life, and the infinite possibilities that a single decision can spark.
'I've just been blown away by the best debut novel in years... A genius idea for a book'
Sunday Times

'Wildly original and emotionally profound'
O

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

106d

📚 Small Boat by: Vincent Delecroix

November 2021: an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants from France to the UK capsizes in the Channel, causing the deaths of 27 people on board. How and why did it happen?

Despite receiving numerous calls for help, the French authorities wrongly told the migrants they were in British water...

https://bookblabla.com/book/small-boat

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #generalfiction #literaryfiction #worldliterature #france

November 2021: an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants from France to the UK capsizes in the Channel, causing the deaths of 27 people on board. How and why did it happen?

Despite receiving numerous calls for help, the French authorities wrongly told the migrants they were in British waters and had to call the British authorities for help. By the time rescue vessels arrived on the scene, all but two of the migrants had died.

The narrator of Delecroix’s fictional account of the events is the woman who took the calls. Accused of failing in her duty, she refuses to be held more responsible than others for this disaster. Why should she be more responsible than the sea, than the war, than the crises behind these tragedies?

A shocking, moral tale of our times, Small Boat reminds us of the power of fiction to illuminate our darkest crimes.
Source: Publisher

The narrator of Delecroix’s fictional account of the events is the woman who took the calls. Accused of failing in her duty, she refuses to be held more responsible than others for this disaster. Why should she be more responsible than the sea, than the war, than the crises behind these tragedies?

A shocking, moral tale of our times, Small Boat reminds us of the power of fiction to illuminate our darkest crimes.

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

106d

📚 The Black Wolf by: Louise Penny

Somewhere out there, in the darkness, a black wolf is feeding.

Several weeks ago, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec and his team uncovered and stopped a domestic terrorist attack in Montréal, arresting the person behind it. A man they called the Black Wolf.

But their relief is s...

https://bookblabla.com/book/the-black-wolf

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #mysterydetective #traditionalfiction

Somewhere out there, in the darkness, a black wolf is feeding.

Several weeks ago, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec and his team uncovered and stopped a domestic terrorist attack in Montréal, arresting the person behind it. A man they called the Black Wolf.

But their relief is short-lived. In a sickening turn of events, Gamache has realized that plot, as horrific as it was, was just the beginning. Perhaps even a deliberate misdirection. One he fell into. Something deeper and darker, more damaging, is planned. Did he in fact arrest the Black Wolf, or are they still out there? Armand is appalled to think his mistake has allowed their conspiracy to grow, to gather supporters. To spread lies, manufacture enemies, and feed hatred and division.

Still recovering from wounds received in stopping the first attack, Armand is confined to the village of Three Pines, leading a covert investigation from there. He must be careful not to let the Black Wolf know he has recognized his mistake. In a quiet church basement, he and his senior agents Beauvoir and Lacoste, pore over what little evidence they have. Two notebooks. A few mysterious numbers on a tattered map of Québec. And a phrase repeated by the person they had called the Grey Wolf. A warning...

In a dry and parched land where there is no water.

Gamache and his small team of supporters realize that for the Black Wolf to have gotten this far, they must have powerful allies, in law enforcement, i

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

1y

Ah, yes... a fresh stench of GOP control back where I used to live. 🤮 😠 Greenville County, #SouthCarolina stops all book fairs for all schools, since "It is not possible for school personnel to vet all book fair content after it arrives, nor can vendors provide accurate content information far enough in advance for it to be vetted through the District prior to the start of fall book fairs."

https://www.wyff4.com/article/greenville-county-schools-no-book-fairs/61945606

#books #censorship #libraries

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

49d

RE: https://mastodon.online/@VastBee/115846721516607488

This is the kind of (anti)social media I like 😁 Or maybe introvert media 🤔

@libraries@literature.cafe @Libraries @library @books @bookstodon @humor @humor@lemmy.world @aiop @joinin

#Library #LibraryMemes #Memes #Libraries #Librarians #Humor #Humour
#Bookstodon #Bookworm #Bookwyrm #BookLove #FantasyBooks

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

105d

📚 Flesh by: David Szalay

Teenaged István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and is soon isolated, drawn instead into a series of events that leave him forever a stranger to peers, his mother, and himself. In the y...

https://bookblabla.com/book/flesh

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #literaryfiction #familylife #generalfiction #friendship

Teenaged István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and is soon isolated, drawn instead into a series of events that leave him forever a stranger to peers, his mother, and himself. In the years that follow, István is born along by the goodwill, or self-interest, of strangers, charting a rocky yet upward trajectory that lands him further from his childhood, and the defining events that abruptly ended it, than he could possibly have imagined.

A collection of intimate moments over the course of decades, Flesh chronicles a man at odds with himself—estranged from and by the circumstances and demands of a life not entirely under his control and the roles that he is asked to play. Shadowed by the specter of past tragedy and the apathy of modernity, the tension between István and all that alienates him hurtles forward until sudden tragedy again throws life as he knows it in jeopardy. “Spare and detached on the page, lush in resonance beyond it” (NPR), Flesh traces the imperceptible but indelible contours of unresolved trauma and its aftermath amid the precarity and violence of an ever-globalizing Europe with incisive insight, unyielding pathos, and startling humanity.

Shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize | Finalist for the Kirkus Prize | Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence

From Booker Prize finalist and the shrewdest writer on contemporary

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

102d

📚 The Emperor of Gladness: Oprah's Book Club by: Ocean Vuong

The hardest thing in the world is to live only once…

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across...

https://bookblabla.com/book/the-emperor-of-gladness-oprahs-book-club

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #literaryfiction #lgbtq #general

The hardest thing in the world is to live only once…

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community on the brink.

Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Ocean Vuong’s writing—formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness—are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.

Listed in 'best books of 2025', according to the Amazon Editors.

The instant New York Times bestseller. Oprah’s Book Club Pick. A 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction finalist. A TIME Best Boo

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

103d

📚 All the Way to the River: Oprah's Book Club by: Elizabeth Gilbert

In 2000, Elizabeth Gilbert met Rayya. They became friends, then best friends, then inseparable. When tragedy entered their lives, the truth was finally laid bare: The two were in love. They were also a pair of addicts, on a collision course toward catastrophe.

Wha...

https://bookblabla.com/book/all-the-way-to-the-river-oprahs-book-club

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #selfhelp #personalmemoirs

In 2000, Elizabeth Gilbert met Rayya. They became friends, then best friends, then inseparable. When tragedy entered their lives, the truth was finally laid bare: The two were in love. They were also a pair of addicts, on a collision course toward catastrophe.

What if your most beautiful love story turned into your biggest nightmare? What if the dear friend who taught you so much about your self-destructive tendencies became the unstable partner with whom you disastrously reenacted every one of them? And what if your most devastating heartbreak opened a pathway to your greatest awakening?

All the Way to the River is a landmark memoir that will resonate with anyone who has ever been captive to love—or to any other passion, substance, or craving—and who yearns, at long last, for liberation.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK

A delicious mashup of narrative that's by turns harrowing and healing. People

Entertaining, insightful, wrenching … punch-to-the-gut powerful. The Washington Post

A blockbuster: brutally honest, lurid, transcendent, and compelling…Gilbert is undoubtedly a force. Boston Globe

In her first nonfiction book in a decade, the #1 bestselling writer who taught millions of readers to live authentically (Eat Pray Love) and creatively (Big Magic) shows how to break free.

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

104d

📚 Ship Breaker by: Paolo Bacigalupi

In America's Gulf Coast region, grounded oil tankers are being broken down for parts by crews of young people. Nailer, a teenage boy, works the light crew, scavenging for copper wiring just to make quota-and hopefully live to see another day.

But when, by luck or by chanc...

https://bookblabla.com/book/ship-breaker

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #juvenilenonfiction #sciencenature #actionadventure #sciencefiction #dystopian

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

1y

#OTD in 1870.

Libraries of the University of Strasbourg and the City of Strasbourg at Temple Neuf are destroyed by fire during the Siege of Strasbourg in the Franco-Prussian War, resulting in the loss of 3,446 medieval manuscripts, including the original 12th-century Hortus deliciarum compiled by Herrad of Landsberg, the Apologist codex containing the only text of the early Epistle to Diognetus, and rare Renaissance books.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Strasbourg

#books #libraries

0 0 0 View Post & Replies See Original

102d

📚 All That We See Or Seem by: Ken Liu

Julia Z, a young woman who gained notoriety at fourteen as the orphan hacker, is trying to live a life of digital obscurity in a quiet Boston suburb.

But when a lawyer named Piers—whose famous artist wife, Elli, has been kidnapped by dangerous criminals—barges into ...

https://bookblabla.com/book/all-that-we-see-or-seem

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #sciencefiction #cyberpunkfiction #thrillers #technological

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

104d

📚 Kafka on the Shore by: Haruki Murakami

Here we meet fifteen-year-old runaway Kafka Tamura and the elderly Nakata, who is drawn to Kafka for reasons that he cannot fathom. As their paths converge, acclaimed author Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodie...

https://bookblabla.com/book/kafka-on-the-shore

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #literaryfiction #fantasy #contemporary

Here we meet fifteen-year-old runaway Kafka Tamura and the elderly Nakata, who is drawn to Kafka for reasons that he cannot fathom. As their paths converge, acclaimed author Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder, in what is a truly remarkable journey.

As powerful as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle... Reading Murakami... is a striking experience in consciousness expansion. Chicago Tribune

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the acclaimed author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and one of the world’s greatest storytellers comes “an insistently metaphysical mind-bender” (The New Yorker) about a teenager on the run and a deceptively simple old man.

Now with a new introduction by the author.

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

101d

📚 Awake by: Jen Hatmaker

At 2:30 a.m. on July 11, 2020, Jen Hatmaker woke up to her husband of twenty-six years whispering in his phone to another woman from their bed. It was the end of life as she knew it. In the months that followed, she went from being a shiny, funny, popular leader to a divorced wreck on antidepressants and antianxiety meds, pare...

https://bookblabla.com/book/awake

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #biographyautobiography #divorceseparation

At 2:30 a.m. on July 11, 2020, Jen Hatmaker woke up to her husband of twenty-six years whispering in his phone to another woman from their bed. It was the end of life as she knew it. In the months that followed, she went from being a shiny, funny, popular leader to a divorced wreck on antidepressants and antianxiety meds, parenting five kids alone with no clue about the functioning of her own bank accounts. Having led millions of women for over a decade—urging them to embrace authenticity, find radical agency, and create healthy relationship—she felt like a catastrophic failure.

In Awake, Jen shares for the first time what happened when she found herself completely lost at sea—and how she made it to shore. In candid, surprisingly funny vignettes spanning forty years of girlhood, marriage, and parenting, Jen lays bare the disorienting upheaval of midlife—the implosion of a marriage, the unraveling of religious and cultural systems, and the grief that accompanies change you didn’t ask for. And, drawing on all resources—from without and within—Jen dares to question the systems beneath the whole house of cards, and to reckon with the myths, half-truths, and lies that brought her to this point.

More than one woman’s story, Awake is a critical analysis of the story given to all of us: the story of gender limitations, religious subservience, body shame, self-erasure. With refreshing candor, Jen explores a midlife renaissance—grieving what’s lost, cherishi

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

103d

📚 The Widow by: John Grisham

Simon Latch is a lawyer in rural Virginia, making just enough to pay his bills while his marriage slowly falls apart. Then into his office walks Eleanor Barnett, an elderly widow in need of a new will. Apparently, her husband left her a small fortune, and no one knows about it.

Once he hooks the riche...

https://bookblabla.com/book/the-widow

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #thrillers #suspensefiction #legalfiction #general

Simon Latch is a lawyer in rural Virginia, making just enough to pay his bills while his marriage slowly falls apart. Then into his office walks Eleanor Barnett, an elderly widow in need of a new will. Apparently, her husband left her a small fortune, and no one knows about it.

Once he hooks the richest client of his career, Simon works quietly to keep her wealth under the radar. But soon her story begins to crack. When she is hospitalized after a car accident, Simon realizes that nothing is as it seems, and he finds himself on trial for a crime he swears he didn’t commit: murder.

Simon knows he’s innocent. But he also knows the circumstantial evidence is against him, and he could spend the rest of his life behind bars. To save himself, he must find the real killer...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • John Grisham is the acclaimed master of the legal thriller. Now, he’s back with his first-ever whodunit, even more suspenseful than his courtroom dramas, as a small-time lawyer accused of murder races to find the real killer to clear his name.

A classic, compulsive, taut and thrilling novel from one of the great storytellers of our time. The Widow is John Grisham at his irresistible, unforgettable best. Chris Whitaker, author of All the Colors of the Dark

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

99d

📚 Half-Blood Blues by: Esi Edugyan

From the smoky bars of pre-war Berlin to the salons of Paris, the narrator of Half-Blood Blues, musician Sid Griffiths, leads the reader through a fascinating, little-known world and into the heart of his own guilty conscience. The bestselling, award-winning Half-Blood Blues is an entrancing, electric story about jazz, race, love ...

https://bookblabla.com/book/half-blood-blues

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #general

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

101d

📚 Audition by: Katie Kitamura

Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, young—young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing ...

https://bookblabla.com/book/audition

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #psychologicalfiction #womenfiction #literary

Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, young—young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day – partner, parent, creator, muse and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately.

Taut and hypnotic, Audition is Katie Kitamura at her virtuosic best.

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2025 BOOKER PRIZE

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

A tightly wound family drama that reads like a psychological thriller. NPR

Bold, stark, genre-bending, Audition will haunt your dreams.The Boston Globe

One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two. An exhilarating, destabilizing Möbius strip of a novel that asks whether we ever really know the people we love.

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

1y

"Several large American #publishers sued #Florida…over a state law that prohibits sexual content in school #libraries. They argue that the law has ignited a wave of book removals in violation of the #FirstAmendment."
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/29/us/florida-book-ban-lawsuit.html

PS: This is one of the rare occasions when I side with publishers in a lawsuit. (FYI, see the next post in this thread for the last time this happened.) This is a case in which the interests of publishers, authors, and readers align.

#BookBans #Censorship

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

73d

📚 Strange Pictures by: Uketsu

A pregnant woman's sketches on a seemingly innocuous blog conceal a chilling warning.
A child's picture of his home contains a dark secret message.
A sketch made by a murder victim in his final moments leads an amateur sleuth down a rabbithole that will reveal a horrifying reality.

Str...

https://bookblabla.com/book/strange-pictures

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #horror #generalfiction #literaryfiction #mysterydetective

A pregnant woman's sketches on a seemingly innocuous blog conceal a chilling warning.
A child's picture of his home contains a dark secret message.
A sketch made by a murder victim in his final moments leads an amateur sleuth down a rabbithole that will reveal a horrifying reality.

Structured around these nine childlike drawings, each holding a disturbing clue, Uketsu invites readers to piece together the mystery behind each and the over-arching backstory that connects them all. Strange Pictures is the internationally bestselling debut from mystery horror YouTube sensation Uketsu—an enigmatic masked figure who has become one of Japan's most talked about contemporary authors.

A great read for spooky-season nights
A perfect addition to any Halloween reading list

Translated from the Japanese by Jim Rion.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

A BARNES AND NOBLE BEST BOOK OF 2025
Uketsu’s strange riddles are chilling and addictive – I couldn’t put it down. Kuang, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface

Delightfully macabre and fiendishly clever. Seemingly unconnected stories tie themselves into a complicated knot, which Uketsu masterfully unravels. G. T. Karber, author of the national bestseller Murdle

Wonderfully complex and carefully crafted... Uketsu keeps readers guessing until the very end. New York Times Book Review
The spine-tingling "triumphant international debut" (Publishers Weekly starred review) tha

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

100d

📚 Careless People by: Sarah Wynn-Williams

An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.

From trips...

https://bookblabla.com/book/careless-people

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #biographyautobiography #industries #internet #technologystudies

An explosive memoir charting one woman’s career at the heart of one of the most influential companies on the planet, Careless People gives you a front-row seat to Facebook, the decisions that have shaped world events in recent decades, and the people who made them.

From trips on private jets and encounters with world leaders to shocking accounts of misogyny and double standards behind the scenes, this searing memoir exposes both the personal and the political fallout when unfettered power and a rotten company culture take hold. In a gripping and often absurd narrative where a few people carelessly hold the world in their hands, this eye-opening memoir reveals what really goes on among the global elite.

Sarah Wynn-Williams tells the wrenching but fun story of Facebook, mapping its rise from stumbling encounters with juntas to Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction when he learned of Facebook’s role in Trump’s election. She experiences the challenges and humiliations of working motherhood within a pressure cooker of a workplace, all while Sheryl Sandberg urges her and others to lean in.

Careless People is a deeply personal account of why and how things have gone so horribly wrong in the past decade—told in a sharp, candid, and utterly disarming voice. A deep, unflinching look at the role that social media has assumed in our lives, Careless People reveals the truth about the leaders of Facebook: how the more power they grasp, the less responsible they become and the conse

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original

98d

📚 The Book of Records by: Madeleine Thien

Lina and her father arrive at an enclave called The Sea, a staging post between migrations, with only a few possessions. In this mysterious and shape-shifting place, a building made of time, pasts and futures collide. Lina befriends her neighbors: Bento, a Jewish schola...

https://bookblabla.com/book/the-book-of-records

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #literaryfiction #historical #generalfiction #sciencefiction

Lina and her father arrive at an enclave called The Sea, a staging post between migrations, with only a few possessions. In this mysterious and shape-shifting place, a building made of time, pasts and futures collide. Lina befriends her neighbors: Bento, a Jewish scholar in seventeenth-century Amsterdam; Blucher, a philosopher in 1930s Germany fleeing Nazi persecution; and Jupiter, a poet of Tang Dynasty China.

Memory, political revolution, generational change, and the ethical imagination are at the heart of Lina’s illuminating conversations with her fellows in the Sea: how we come to believe what we believe, and how every person is an irreplaceable, unique vessel of history. Through the guidance of these great thinkers, Lina equips herself to reckon with difficult questions of guilt, responsibility, and the possibility of redemption when her ailing father begins to reveal his role in their family’s tragic past.
As Lina confronts her father’s troubling admissions, she begins to reconceptualize the world around her, gaining a deeper understanding of how our individual futures are shaped by our political circumstances, and she relies on the collective joy of art and intellectual endeavors to carry her through difficulty. A novel that voyages between centuries, generations, and ideas, The Book of Records is an indelible testament to the migratory nature of humanity and our ceaseless search for a home—in the physical world, in cyberspace, in history, and in the imagin

ALT

0 0 1 View Post & Replies See Original