Witches Abroad
Tropic of Cancer
Good Omens
Where the Crawdads Sing
Braiding Sweetgrass
Wyrd Sisters
Thinking like a Parrot: Perspectives from the Wild
• unread
last updated: 2024-12-07 18:16:39.152909
Natural History of Vacant Lots
Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses
• unread
last updated: 2024-12-07 18:15:44.306974
The Bird Sisters
Eileen
• read
finished: 2024-11-29 00:00:00
Wow again amazing vibes and wonderfully terrible characters Rating: ★★★★★
Convenience Store Woman
Beasts
Fire is Your Water
How To Be Human
Commonwealth
Evergreen
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
No Plan B: A Jack Reacher Novel (27)
Billy Summers
Tom Lake
Hello Beautiful
Kindred
The Berry Pickers
The Bee Sting
Yellowface
James
Little Liar
The Girl With The Louding Voice
• read
finished: None
A powerful book about a young girl in Nigeria, wants and education but is trapped in a life of servitude.
Calling a Wolf a Wolf
Whereas
Look
Ice Age
The Selfish Gene
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
• unread
last updated: 2024-11-29 22:26:13.033201
Tarzan of the Apes
The Defining Decade
The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
• unread
last updated: 2024-11-29 15:31:54.656020
Boom: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation
Hard Landing: The Epic Contest for Power and Profits That Plunged the Airlines into Chaos
• unread
last updated: 2024-11-29 15:30:53.346339
Of Mice and Men
Better Off Dead: A Jack Reacher Novel (26)
The Sentinel: A Jack Reacher Novel (25)
Kidnapped
All Quiet on the Western Front
A Tale of Two Cities
Cryptonomicon
East of Eden
Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger
• reading
last updated: 2024-11-29 15:15:15.788013
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Atomic Habits
Sunny
Ping Pong
• read
finished: 2024-11-26 15:28:47.802652
Makoto “Smile” Tsukimoto and his friend Yutaka “Peco” Hoshino have been playing table tennis since they were kids, but as they enter high school, they find that the game has changed. Seeing potential in them that they themselves don’t fully realize, the coach recruits them for the school team. Bringing out their best will mean challenging the top players from rival schools in the summer tournament, including an ace Chinese exchange student who almost made the Olympic team. With the pressure on, can Smile and Peco take the heat and make it into the finals?
Tekkonkinkreet: Black & White 30th Anniversary Edition
• read
finished: 2024-11-26 15:28:39.037400
The streets of Treasure Town are said to belong to "The Cats." They know everything that goes on in the city, and no one can stir up trouble without going through them first. In reality, The Cats are a pair of orphan boys called Black and White, who aren’t afraid of anything or anyone. But their rule of the streets is challenged when the Yakuza come to town and start making changes. The wild Black and the carefree White have no one to rely on but themselves to get their Treasure Town back to the way it was. But their bond is tested as they quickly realize going back to how things were may no longer be an option.
Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small-Town Life
• unread
last updated: 2024-11-25 16:59:17.298546
Bright Young Women
Loud
Grandma Moses: My Life's History
Pineapple Street
Intermezzo
The Long Walk
HHhH
Anxious Bliss: A Case Study of Dissociation in a Mexican Nun
In Watermelon Sugar
I, Little Asylum
No Siege is Absolute: Versions of Rene Char
Changing
The Selected Writings
Spring Essence: The Poetry of Hô Xuân Huong
So There: Poems 1976-1983
The Lost Lunar Baedeker
Down Below
Mouchette
The Professor and the Siren
White Walls
Red Bird
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene
Seeing the Light
The Cassandra Complex Living with Disbelief A Modern Perspective on Hysteria
Remembering Anna O. A Century of Mystification
The Spiral Way: A Woman's Healing Journey
Agnes Martin: Writings / Schriften
True Knowledge of the Christ: Theosophy and Rosicrucianism
• reading
last updated: 2024-11-14 08:27:23.162458
Beautyland
Black Man in a White Coat
Exposure
The Amputee's Guide to Sex
All that Remains
Normal Life
• reading
last updated: 2024-11-12 22:58:34.034936
"Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law"
Ordinary Affects
The Message
Severance
Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age
• unread
last updated: 2024-11-07 09:38:34.033212
Wounded by Love
Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives: The Life and Teachings of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica
• unread
last updated: 2024-11-07 09:37:16.906399
Everyday Saints and Other Stories
Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Intimacy and Its Dilemmas
• unread
last updated: 2024-11-07 05:58:43.934505
Demon Copperhead
A Scatter of Light
I Who Have Never Known Men
A Mathematician's Apology
A Pale View of Hills
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Kappa
Into the Wild
Superstring Theory: Vol II
String Theory: Vol I
Mathemtical Introduction to Conformal Field Theory
Bliss Montage
• read
finished: 2024-11-03 07:00:00
Finished this in one day which is the fastest I've read a book in a hot sec. A collection of short stories that are both grounded yet absurdist (a tightrope to walk to be sure - my closest analog for the style is maybe Michael DeForge?). Thuroughly enjoyable
The World Beyond Your Head
No Longer Human
Virgin Whore
Past Tense: The Cocteau Diaries Volume 1
Portrait of a Thief
Dear Girls
• read
finished: 2022-01-26 00:00:00
borrowed from libby as an audiobook. a pretty lighthearted listen (from what i remember)
Disorientation
Tuesdays with Morrie
Little Fires Everywhere
Surfing Through Hyperspace: Understanding Higher Universes in Six Easy Lessons
• read
finished: 2024-11-01 07:00:00
i finished reading this a couple years ago, but there were a lot of parts i kept going back to over and over again. i'd like to read it again in its entirety. recommended and sent to me by marlon :)
The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
• reading
last updated: 2024-11-01 18:44:16.641206
The Things They Carried
Einstein's Dreams
I'm Glad My Mom Died
Something That May Shock and Discredit You
Slaughterhouse-Five
Amerika
The Vegitarian
Before Brezhnev Died
The Last Night at the Telegraph Club
Bordism: Old and New
• archive
last updated: 2024-10-22 15:31:55.147620
D. Freed Application of bordism categories to topological quantum field theory
War and Peace
• read
finished: 2024-10-15 07:00:00
penguins classic version going in mostly blind, only knowing the book's reputation as something classic and massive, my first two realizations were a) it’s very hard to keep track of all the characters and b) it’s surprisingly readable? Tolstoy has clear characterization and tight chapters. The actual writing isn't bloated or obtuse and it felt more contemporary than I expected. It's a marathon but not a slog. Moments are evocative, crushing, sometimes hilarious. but man, somehow this 1300 page book feels twice that length. He admits this early on but it's not fully supposed to be a 'novel'. it's Tolstoy's rendering of an important moment in the history of Russia (1800-1812) that he spent years studying and researching (the book was written about 40 years later). The narration largely follows characters weaving in and out of historical events, but regularly step outside of fiction as Tolstoy describes historical context (the movement of armies, the philosophy of movement of masses, the fallacy of 'great individuals of history', etc). These gods-eye-view sidequests can last for 60+ pages at a time. The worst offender here is the epilogue (more than 100 dull pages long) which sucks any momentum the reader may have had going into the book's homestretch and replaces it with a 101 philosophy treatise of free will. I would go as far to say anyone reading War and Peace can skip it entirely and not miss a thing. War and Peace manages to be about everything. Love and loss and battle and nature and god and mundanity and nobility and peasantry and duels and economics and It's sweeping and massive but also specific, human scaled, and cares deeply about the experiences of individuals.
House of Leaves
The Travelling Cat Chronicles
The Little Prince
The Haunting of Hill House
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
The Handmaid's Tale
Kira-Kira
Gossamer
• read
finished: 2024-10-05 07:00:00
“Everything that you're a part of. Your own story fills you.”
Alice in Wonderland
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finished: 2024-10-02 00:00:00
Journey with Alice down the rabbit hole into a world of wonder where oddities, logic and wordplay rule supreme. Encounter characters like the grinning Cheshire Cat who can vanish into thin air, the cryptic Mad Hatter who speaks in riddles and the harrowing Queen of Hearts obsessed with the phrase "Off with their heads!" This is a land where rules have no boundaries, eating mushrooms will make you grow or shrink, croquet is played with flamingos and hedgehogs, and exorbitant trials are held for the theft of tarts. Amidst these absurdities, Alice will have to find her own way home. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland began as a story told to three little girls in a rowboat, near Oxford. Ten year old Alice Liddell asked to have the story written down and two years later it was published with immediate success. Carroll's unique play on logic has undoubtedly led to its lasting appeal to adults, while remaining one of the most beloved children's tales of all time. Rating: ★★★☆☆
Comfort Woman: A Filipina's Story of Prostitution and Slavery under the Japanese Military
• reading
last updated: 2024-10-04 17:24:02.275173
Shoplifter
The Brothers Karamazov
Capitalism and Schizophrenia
The Ego and Its Own
Galatea
Are Prisons Obsolete?
Goodbye, Vitamin
What My Mother and I Don't Talk About
Variations on the Right to Remain Silent
Funny Story
Tokyo These Days
• reading
last updated: 2024-09-24 01:17:09.688473
After 30 years as a manga editor, Kazuo Shiozawa suddenly quits. Although he feels early retirement is the only way to atone for his failures as an editor, the manga world isn't done with him. On his final day as an editor, Shiozawa takes a train he's ridden hundreds of times to impart some last advice to a manga creator whose work he used to edit. Later, he is drawn to return to a bookshop at the request of a junior editor who wants his help dealing with an incorrigible manga creator who used to be edited by Shiozawa and now refuses to work with anyone else. For Shiozawa, Tokyo these days is full of memory and is cocooned in the inescapable bonds among manga creators, their editors, art, and life itself. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1384415137
How It Works Out
Cartoons
Little Rot
Wanderlust: A History of Walking
The Wretched of the Earth
Notes from Walnut Tree Farm
The Screaming Sky: In pursuit of swifts
The Celebrants
4d N=1 Dynamics
The Pairing
About Me
• unread
last updated: 2024-09-17 06:26:27.031662
looking for recommendations for books on Southern Californian or PNW geology if you have any Some places to find me: - joshvredevoogd.com - twitter.com/jawshv - github.com/jawshv
It's Lonely At the Centre of the Earth
• read
finished: 2024-09-15 00:00:00
Cartoonist Zoe Thorogood records 6 months of her own life as it falls apart in a desperate attempt to put it back together again in the only way she knows how. IT'S LONELY AT THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH is an intimate and metanarrative look into the life of a selfish artist who must create for her own survival. https://search.worldcat.org/title/1306523951 Rating: ★★★★★
The Vegitarian
Rifqa
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
The Hole
Panenka
Season of Migration to the North
Plainwater
Paradise Rot
The Sluts
• read
finished: 2024-08-26 07:00:00
Some quotes I liked: “I used to be so into trying to understand myself, but now I just want to do things, and not understand them.” "Everyone seems to want this to end in some logical way. I started this whole thing because I wanted to know and feel something important, and when I eventually realized it wouldn't happen with Brad, I gave up. Of course I knew Brad, and you didn't. Brad was just your idea, and I guess you think he's a great idea. He may be a great idea, but Brad himself is just a kid who got drafted into the job of representing an idea. Now Brad is just a name. You don't even know who it belongs to anymore. The point is, this is your story and your ending, not Brad's and mine. I used to wish our story would end something like this. Maybe I still wish it had, but it didn't and it won't." “You're getting pretty heavy on me, and I don't really have a problem with that, but the whole thing for me is that you love me, and if you don't anymore, then I don't know what the fuck to do. If you love me, I'll do fucking anything you want, don't you know that? I fucking swear. I don't know what you want me to say about your rules. I feel like I don't know what answers you expect, and I'm bad when I don't know what people want, because I always make the wrong decision.”
Anything That Moves
Envelope Poems
Sleepless Nights
Punks
The Colossus
Bad Behavior
The Secret History
Agua Viva
On Being Blue
Slow Days, Fast Company
Malina
The Brothers Karamazov
Ice
Notes of a Crocodile
I Fear My Pain Interests You
Talk
Boundless
Time Is A Mother
Lie With Me
Severance
No One Belongs Here More Than You
Endgame
Bluets
My Loose Thread
Autobiography of Red
The Bell Jar
Crush
Eileen
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Call Me By Your Name
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Confessions
The Hypocrite
Kitchen
Bone
Heart of a Dog Book
Enigma Variations
It lasts forever then it’s over
This side of paradise
Waiting for Godot
Beyond and good and evil
Notes from a Dead House
Orlanda
Babel
Dracula
We Wish to Inform you that Tomorrow we Will be Killed with our Families
• unread
last updated: 2024-09-10 16:06:25.073140
The Apprenticeship of the Book of Pleasure
The Trial
Kafka on the Shore
A Room of One’s Own
Sula
Stoner
Rebecca
Giovanni's Room
Memorial
No Longer Human
Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women
• unread
last updated: 2024-09-08 15:12:42.736419
Combining oral history with magical realism and poetry, Dr. EPJ explores the fictional, women-only world of Hymen, where he bears witness to the real-life stories of queer Black women throughout the American South.
the engine whisperers
naija marxisms
In Pursuit of Zeta-3
Cursed Bread: A Novel
Strange Weather in Tokyo
The Narrow Road to the Interior
• reading
last updated: 2024-09-01 11:52:16.029098
A collection of over thirty poems by American poet Kimiko Hahn in which she explores her various identities. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/68416904
New Dark Age
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finished: 2024-08-31 00:00:00
We live in times of increasing inscrutability. Our news feeds are filled with unverified, unverifiable speculation, much of it automatically generated by anonymous software. As a result, we no longer understand what is happening around us. Underlying all of these trends is a single idea: the belief that quantitative data can provide a coherent model of the world, and the efficacy of computable information to provide us with ways of acting within it. Yet the sheer volume of information available to us today reveals less than we hope. Rather it heralds a new Dark Age: a world of ever-increasing incomprehension. In his brilliant new work, leading artist and writer James Bridle offers us a warning against the future in which the contemporary promise of a new technologically assisted enlightenment may just deliver its opposite: an age of complex uncertainty, predictive algorithms, surveillance, the hollowing out of empathy. Surveying the history of art, technology and information systems he reveals the dark clouds that gather over discussions of the digital sublime. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1001444157 Rating: ★★★★★
No Longer Human
• unread
last updated: 2024-09-01 02:14:25.561755
Plagued by a maddening anxiety, the terrible disconnect between his own concept of happiness and the joy of the rest of the world, Yozo Oba plays the clown in his dissolute life, holding up a mask for those around him as he spirals ever downward, locked arm-in-arm with death. Osamu Dazai’s immortal—and supposedly autobiographical—work of Japanese literature, is perfectly adapted here into a manga by Junji Ito. The imagery wrenches open the text of the novel one line at a time to sublimate Yozo’s mental landscape into something even more delicate and grotesque. This is the ultimate in art by Ito, proof that nothing can surpass the terror of the human psyche.
Cursed Bunny
• unread
last updated: 2024-09-01 02:14:19.256013
Cursed Bunny is unique and imaginative, blending horror, sci-fi, fairy tales, and speculative fiction into stories that defy categorization. By turns thought-provoking and stomach-turning, here monsters take the shapes of furry woodland creatures and danger lurks in unexpected corners of everyday apartment buildings. But in this unforgettable collection, translated by the acclaimed Anton Hur, Chung's absurd, haunting universe could be our own.
The Empathy Exams
• unread
last updated: 2024-09-01 02:13:59.380152
A collection of essays explores empathy, using topics ranging from street violence and incarceration to reality television and literary sentimentality to ask questions about people's understanding of and relationships with others. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/846545823
The Mushroom at the End of the World
• unread
last updated: 2024-09-01 02:13:52.750092
Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world-and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to grow in daunting places. It is also an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. In all its contradictions, matsutake offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: what manages to live in the ruins we have made? A tale of diversity within our damaged landscapes, The Mushroom at the End of the World follows one of the strangest commodity chains of our times to explore the unexpected corners of capitalism. Here, we witness the varied and peculiar worlds of matsutake commerce: the worlds of Japanese gourmets, capitalist traders, Hmong jungle fighters, industrial forests, Yi Chinese goat herders, Finnish nature guides, and more. These companions also lead us into fungal ecologies and forest histories to better understand the promise of cohabitation in a time of massive human destruction. By investigating one of the world's most sought-after fungi, The Mushroom at the End of the World presents an original examination into the relation between capitalist destruction and collaborative survival within multispecies landscapes, the prerequisite for continuing life on earth. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/923713782
Against Technoableism
• unread
last updated: 2024-09-01 02:13:46.252265
A manifesto exploding what we think we know about disability, and arguing that disabled people are the real experts when it comes to technology and disability. When bioethicist and professor Ashley Shew became a self-described "hard-of-hearing chemo-brained amputee with Crohn's disease and tinnitus," there was no returning to "normal." Suddenly well-meaning people called her an "inspiration" while grocery shopping, or viewed her as a needy recipient of technological wizardry. Most disabled people don't want what the abled assume they want--nor are they generally asked. Why do abled people frame disability as an individual problem that calls for technological solutions, rather than a social one? In a warm, feisty, opinionated voice and vibrant prose, Shew shows how we can create better narratives and more accessible futures by drawing from the insights of the cross-disability community. For the future is surely disabled--whether through changing climate, new diseases, or even through space travel. It's time we looked closely at how we all think about disability technologies and learn to envision disabilities not as liabilities, but as skill sets enabling all of us to navigate a challenging world. A manifesto exploding what we think we know about disability, and arguing that disabled people are the real experts when it comes to technology and disability. When bioethicist and professor Ashley Shew became a self-described "hard-of-hearing chemo-brained amputee with Crohn's disease and tinnitus," there was no returning to "normal." Suddenly well-meaning people called her an "inspiration" while grocery shopping, or viewed her as a needy recipient of technological wizardry. Most disabled people don't want what the abled assume they want--nor are they generally asked. Why do abled people frame disability as an individual problem that calls for technological solutions, rather than a social one? In a warm, feisty, opinionated voice and vibrant prose, Shew shows how we can create better narratives and more accessible futures by drawing from the insights of the cross-disability community. For the future is surely disabled--whether through changing climate, new diseases, or even through space travel. It's time we looked closely at how we all think about disability technologies and learn to envision disabilities not as liabilities, but as skill sets enabling all of us to navigate a challenging world. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1401761567
Syllabus
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last updated: 2024-09-01 02:13:41.818084
Writing exercises and creativity advice from Lynda Barry's pioneering, life-changing workshop. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/927138563
bp : beginnings
Lumayo Ka Nga Sa Akin
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last updated: 2024-09-01 02:13:27.197608
Mula sa kasumpa-sumpang kahirapan at kalunos-lunos na kaignorantehan sa mundong kanyang kinagisnan, namulat si Marie sa tunay na mukha ng matamis at mapapakasakit na pag-ibig. Ngunit makakayanan niya ba ang mga hamon ng bukas? Ano ang kanyang magiging kapalaran?
Noli Me Tángere
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last updated: 2024-09-01 02:13:15.715205
Crisostomo Ibarra returns to the Philippines after studying in Europe for seven years. His father has died mysteriously and soon new obstacles appear to his marriage to childhood sweetheart Maria Clara... Noli Me Tangere reflects the society and incidents from the Philippines of Rizal's time, a country ruled by Spanish friars for over 300 years. As a result, many of the characters in the novel have now become woven into the culture. The publication of this book and its sequel El Filibusterismo, led to Asia's first nationalist revolution in 1896. However no writer paid a higher price for self-expression: the Spanish executed Rizal primarily for his writings. But for the same reason, Filipinos embraced him as their national hero.
State and Society in the Philippines
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last updated: 2024-09-01 02:13:09.751705
People in the Philippines routinely vote, run for office, organize social movements, and call for good governance by the state. Why, then, is there a recurring state society dilemma in the Philippines? One horn of the dilemma is the persistent inability of the state to provide basic services, guarantee peace and order, and foster economic development. The other is Filipinos' equally enduring suspicion of a strong state. The idea of a strong republic evokes President Marcos's martial law regime of the 1970s and 1980s, which spawned two armed rebellions, cost thousands of lives in repression and billions of dollars in corruption, set the nation back years in economic development, and exacerbated suspicion of the state." "This dilemma stimulates thinking about the puzzle of state resilience. How has a "weak state" maintained the territorial integrity of the Philippines in the postwar period in the face of two major rebellions and an armed separatist movement, corruption, mismanagement, intractable poverty, weak sovereignty, and an often chaotic electoral system? Why does the inability to collect taxes, secure citizens' lives and property, and maintain economic infrastructure not result in state failure?" "State and Society in the Philippines engages the dilemma of state society relations through a historical treatment of state formation and the corresponding conflicts and collaborations between state leaders and social forces. It examines the long history of institutional state weakness in the Philippines and the efforts made to overcome the state's structural fragility and strengthen its bond with society. It answers these difficult questions by focusing on how the state has shaped and been shaped by its interaction with social forces, especially in the rituals of popular mobilization that have produced surprising and diverse results. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/57452454
Darkness Visible
• unread
last updated: 2024-09-01 02:13:01.687076
The author chronicles his personal battles with severe depression, and offers help to others on how to overcome this disorder. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/78895161
Solanin
• unread
last updated: 2024-09-01 02:12:55.712158
Meiko Inoue is a recent college grad working as an office lady in a job she hates. Her boyfriend Shigeo is permanently crashing at her apartment because his job as a freelance illustrator doesn't pay enough for rent. And her parents in the country keep sending her boxes of veggies that just rot in her fridge. Straddling the line between her years as a student and the rest of her life, Meiko struggles with the feeling that she's just not cut out to be a part of the real world. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/209717008
Dead Dead Demons Dededede Destruction
• unread
last updated: 2024-09-01 02:12:50.332045
When you look up at the sky, what do you see? A blue sky? Freedom? A hopeful future? The people of Tokyo see none of these. Instead, an ominous alien mothership looms overhead, engulfing the city skyscape. Three years ago, they came. The arrival of the "Invaders" sparked the greatest war humanity had ever faced—one that threatened to end the world. The Japanese government scrambled to fight the Invaders. Weapons were mass-produced, sparking controversy and pacifist movements. That day, everything changed. And yet, nothing has changed. Kadode Koyama and Ouran Nakagawa live their final days like they always have: going to school, playing with friends, and doing what any carefree high school girl would do. As they grow up, they come to learn what it truly means to be an adult, in a world where adults seem to be demons who only deceive and destroy. They come to learn the real threat to humanity is not the Invaders, but humanity itself.
Goodbye, Things
• unread
last updated: 2024-09-01 02:12:34.612133
Fumio Sasaki is not an enlightened minimalism expert or organizing guru like Marie Kondo--he's just a regular guy who was stressed out and constantly comparing himself to others, until one day he decided to change his life by saying goodbye to everything he didn't absolutely need. The effects were remarkable: Sasaki gained true freedom, new focus, and a real sense of gratitude for everything around him. In Goodbye, Things Sasaki modestly shares his personal minimalist experience, offering specific tips on the minimizing process and revealing how the new minimalist movement can not only transform your space but truly enrich your life. The benefits of a minimalist life can be realized by anyone, and Sasaki's humble vision of true happiness will open your eyes to minimalism's potential. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/951070792
Hiraeth: The End of the Journey
• unread
last updated: 2024-09-01 02:12:27.651050
Mika, a junior high student, is grieving the loss of her best friend and determined to reunite with her in death. However, her path collides with an unnamed god journeying to Yomi (the land of the dead) and their companion Hibino, an immortal man who is following the god in hopes of learning how to finally end his own life. Together, the three travel by motorbike to Shimane Prefecture, where the entrance to Yomi is said to be located.
The Columbia Anthology of Japanese Essays : Zuihitsu from the Tenth to the Twenty-First Century
• unread
last updated: 2024-09-01 02:12:11.790506
A court lady of the Heian era, an early modern philologist, a Meiji-period novelist, and a physicist at Tokyo University. What do they have in common, besides being Japanese? They all wrote zuihitsu, a uniquely Japanese literary genre encompassing features of the nonfiction or personal essay and miscellaneous musings. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/891445967
What You Are Looking For Is in the Library
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
The River of Consciousness
The Name of the Rose
The Song of Achilles
The Day of Creation
Less than One
Narziss and Goldmund
In Memory of Memory
The Tao of Pooh
Notes on Shapeshifting
North and South
Ways of Seeing
The Medici Effect
Glass Bead Game
Gift from the Sea
As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh
Upstream
The Master and his Emissary
The Divided Self
The House on Moon Lake
Sourdough
Seer of Sevenwaters
The Creative Act
Wabi-Sabi
Lilith
Philosopher of the Heart
The secret history
1Q84
A Magical Girl Retires
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finished: 2024-08-24 00:00:00
A millennial turned magical girl must combat climate change and credit card debt in this delightful, witty, and wildly imaginative ode to magical girl manga. Twenty-nine, depressed, and drowning in credit card debt after losing her job during the pandemic, a millennial woman decides to end her troubles by jumping off Seoul's Mapo Bridge. But her suicide attempt is interrupted by a girl dressed all in white?her guardian angel. Ah Roa is a clairvoyant magical girl on a mission to find the greatest magical girl of all time. And our protagonist just may be that special someone. But the young woman's initial excitement turns to frustration when she learns being a magical girl in real life is much different than how it's portrayed in stories. It isn't just destiny?it's work. Magical girls go to job fairs, join trade unions, attend classes. And for this magical girl there are no special powers and no great perks, and despite being magical, she still battles with low self-esteem. Her magic wand . . . is a credit card?which she must use to defeat a terrifying threat that isn't a monster or an intergalactic war. It's global climate change. Because magical girls need to think about sustainability, too. Park Seolyeon reimagines classic fantasy tropes in a novel that explores real-world challenges that are both deeply personal and universal: the search for meaning and the desire to do good in a world that feels like it's ending. A fun, fast-paced, and enchanting narrative that sparkles thanks to award-nominated translator Anton Hur, A Magical Girl Retires reminds us that we are all magical girls?that fighting evil by moonlight and winning love by daylight can be anyone's game. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1433705579 Rating: ★★☆☆☆
I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream
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finished: 2024-08-25 04:00:00
A chilling short story of the last survivors of a post-apocalyptic world as they are endlessly tormented by a malevolent AI computer.
To Kill a Mockingbird
• archive
last updated: 2024-08-25 00:12:05.868838
A young girl in the racially divided American South witnesses her father grapple with the harsh realities of prejudice and moral courage in her small town.
Becoming Yourself
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finished: 2024-08-24 04:00:00
Designed for survivors of ritualistic abuse and extreme conditioning, this book offers practical guidance on understanding symptoms, achieving stability, and healing by addressing dissociation, managing complex personality systems, and fostering inner cooperation. PDF: https://angelthing.linkh.at/become-urself
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
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last updated: 2024-08-25 00:07:42.216819
A lyrical journey of a young Vietnamese-American's heartfelt letter to his mother, unraveling the complexities of family, identity, and trauma through a tapestry of memory and emotion.
American Chica
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finished: 2024-08-24 04:00:00
The captivating memoir of Marie Arana as she bridges her Peruvian heritage with her American upbringing, uncovering a rich tapestry of family, history, and self-discovery.
Hidden Figures
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finished: 2024-08-24 04:00:00
The untold story of the brilliant African American women mathematicians who played a crucial role in NASA's early space missions, overcoming racial and gender barriers to contribute to America's triumph in the Space Race.
Hell Followed With Us
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last updated: 2024-08-24 21:31:04.137216
A trans teen, armed with extraordinary powers and a dark past, navigates a post-apocalyptic world ravaged by an extremist cult while confronting his religious trauma.
The Prodigies
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finished: 2024-08-24 04:00:00
A five-year-old genius with selective mutism and peculiar fainting spells is thrust into a secret academy for gifted children, where she navigates a harsh social hierarchy, fierce competition, and enigmatic disappearances.
Freedom is a Constant Struggle
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last updated: 2024-08-24 21:14:53.659347
A powerful collection of essays and speeches that intertwine the global fight for racial justice, feminist liberation, and revolutionary change, from Palestine to Ferguson. PDF: https://angelthing.linkh.at/freedom *While I do provide a free PDF link, I encourage those of you who are interested in reading this to BUY THIS BOOK to support the author, if you are able.
Negroes With Guns
• reading
last updated: 2024-08-24 21:13:23.136902
A radical journey of challenging racial injustice through armed self-defense, revealing the powerful and controversial role of Black militancy in the fight for civil rights during the turbulent 1950s and 1960s. PDF: https://angelthing.linkh.at/neg-w-guns
Stone Butch Blues
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last updated: 2024-08-24 21:13:15.530762
A genderqueer butch lesbian navigates the challenges of identity and acceptance in a turbulent post-World War II America. PDF: https://www.lesliefeinberg.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Stone-Butch-Blues-by-Leslie-Feinberg.pdf
Autistic and Black
• unread
last updated: 2024-08-24 21:12:30.378044
A powerful insight into the lives of Black autistic people. PDF: https://angelthing.linkh.at/aut-and-blk *While I do provide a free PDF link, I encourage those of you who are interested in reading this to BUY THIS BOOK to support the author, if you are able.
The Bell Jar
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last updated: 2024-08-24 21:12:20.774306
A young woman finds herself sinking into a deep mental crisis, as her search for identity and purpose is overshadowed by the suffocating grip of depression.
Black Disability Politics
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last updated: 2024-08-24 21:12:04.052019
An exploration of how issues of disability have been and continue to be central to Black activism from the 1970s to the present. PDF: https://angelthing.linkh.at/blk-dis-pol *While I do provide a free PDF link, I encourage those of you who are interested in reading this to BUY THIS BOOK to support the author, if you are able.
Push
• unread
last updated: 2024-08-24 21:05:27.410642
A pregnant teenager in Harlem—grappling with abuse, poverty, and illiteracy—embarks on a harrowing journey of self-discovery and empowerment.
The Metamorphosis
• unread
last updated: 2024-08-24 21:02:59.898023
In this philosophical exploration of alienation, a traveling salesman awakens one morning to find himself transformed into a giant insect.
Coping With Trauma-Related Dissociation
• reading
last updated: 2024-08-24 20:26:53.286403
This patient-oriented manual for complex trauma survivors includes psychoeducation, homework sheets, and exercises that support inner communication and collaboration with dissociative parts of the personality. PDF: https://angelthing.linkh.at/cope-w-dissoci
The Alchemy of Wolves and Sheep
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last updated: 2024-08-24 20:17:58.378414
A relational approach to internalized perpetration in complex trauma survivors. PDF: https://angelthing.linkh.at/alch-wol-sheep
Notes of a Native Son
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last updated: 2024-08-24 20:16:47.902747
A collection of ten essays tackling issues of race in America and Europe. PDF: https://angelthing.linkh.at/notes-nat-son
Crime and Punishment
Riichi Book I
The Trial
The Annotated Turing
The Color Purple
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finished: 2023-08-23 04:00:00
A resilient African American woman in the early 20th-century American South overcomes decades of abuse and hardship through the transformative power of love, sisterhood, and self-discovery.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
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finished: 2024-08-23 04:00:00
The epic tale of the Buendía family over seven generations in the mythical town of Macondo, exploring themes of love, power, and destiny amid the backdrop of magical realism.
Their Eyes Were Watching God
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finished: 2024-08-23 04:00:00
A resilient Black woman embarks on a journey of self-discovery and empowerment as she navigates three tumultuous marriages and seeks her own voice and independence in the early 20th-century South.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
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finished: 2019-09-19 04:00:00
A socially awkward high school freshman navigates the trials of adolescence, mental health, and first love, while finding solace and self-discovery through a group of unconventional friends who help him embrace his true self.
Mr. Potter
Clover
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finished: 2024-08-16 00:00:00
Kazuhiko is a young, but already deeply wounded black ops agent of a baroque, retro-tech future-- is pulled out of retirement to escort Sue, a mysterious waif, to a destination she alone knows. Sue and Kazuhiko have never met, yet she knows him, having grown up since the age of four with her only human contact being two distant voices: that of her elderly 'grandma'-- Kazuhiko's commander, General Ko, and of Kazuhiko's dead girlfriend, the beautiful singer Ora. Sue has been kept in that cage all these years because of what she is, and what the Clover Leaf Project found her to be: a military top secret, and the most dangerous person in the world! https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/221154968 Rating: ★★★☆☆
Klara and the Sun
A Tale of Two Cities
Akira
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last updated: 2024-08-18 04:25:31.261356
Welcome to Neo-Tokyo, built on the ashes of a Tokyo annihilated by a blast of unknown origin that triggered World War III. The lives of two streetwise teenage friends, Tetsuo and Kaneda, change forever when paranormal abilities begin to waken in Tetsuo, making him a target for a shadowy agency that will stop at nothing to prevent another catastrophe like the one that leveled Tokyo. At the core of the agency's motivation is a raw, all-consuming fear of an unthinkable, monstrous power known only as Akira. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/459789310
Steal Like An Artist
My Body
The Marriage Plot
Trick Mirror
the violence of austerity
crude britannia: how oil shaped a nation
testo junkie
escape to an autumn pavement
Slippery Creatures
Extra Focus: The Quick Start Guide to Adult ADHD
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finished: 2024-08-08 00:00:00
https://www.extrafocusbook.com/ Rating: ★★★★☆
Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves
• unread
last updated: 2024-08-08 15:18:59.180247
A country’s history is like a jigsaw puzzle. The bigger picture of how a country and its people came to be can be pieced together through multiple narratives, perspectives, and stories. In Silk, Silver, Spices, Slaves, Lio Mangubat reaches back into the depths of colonial archives and brings to life long-lost stories that would otherwise have been footnotes in Philippine history. https://www.faction.press/product-page/silk-silver-spices-slaves-philippines-history
The Message
Reimagining Design Unlocking Strategic Innovation
Harriet Tubman Portrait of an American Hero
Night Flyer
Processes of Decolonization
Parable of the Sower
Maame
Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970-1979
• reading
last updated: 2024-08-05 07:04:38.752386
Edition: 2004 Duke University Press eISBN: 978-0-8223-8511-0
The Complete Fear of Kathy Acker
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finished: 2024-07-03 22:00:00
Edition: 2023 Semiotext(e) ISBN: 978-1-63590-185-6
Designing Your Life
The Drifting Classroom
• reading
last updated: 2024-08-03 22:48:03.504279
Out of nowhere, an entire school vanishes, leaving nothing but a hole in the ground. While parents mourn and authorities investigate, the students and teachers find themselves not dead but stranded in a terrifying wasteland where they must fight to survive. https://search.worldcat.org/title/1122865316
Glory
trans girl suicide museum
none of the above
one hundred years of solitude
eclogues
The Left Hand of Darkness
inferno
Null Magical Girl Vol. 1-3
The Three Body Problem
Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. 1
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finished: 2024-07-21 00:00:00
There's never a dull day at the office when you're a magical girl! Are you looking for something new? Something challenging? Something very highly paid? Exterminating monsters is an exciting, fast-paced field that will get you out from behind a desk and into the action. With over 500 magical girl companies now in operation, you're sure to find a position--and a uniform--that fits. Start your career as a magical girl today! Kana Sakuragi is an excellent candidate for the job. Any job! She's motivated and organized, and has a fantastic memory. So why has she interviewed at over 15 companies without receiving a single offer? She's trying to keep a positive attitude, but it seems like her bad luck is only getting worse when a monster crashes her latest interview. As havoc ensues, she finds herself helping the magical girl who comes to their rescue and ends up with more than just her life in return. Meet the newest magical girl at Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc.! https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1384412345 Rating: ★★★☆☆
Cat-Eyed Boy
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last updated: 2024-07-26 17:17:56.127777
Kazuo Umezz’s classic collection of horror stories featuring a strange cat-eyed boy, shunned by humans and demons alike.
Hello Tokyo
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finished: 2024-07-24 21:33:24.857791
Presents a series of handicraft projects that create Japanese-inspired items, including notebooks, charm bracelets, party decorations, gift wrapping, napkins, planters, and collage magnets. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/980949316 Rating: ★★★☆☆
Neo-Nihilism : The Philosophy of Power
Ahrimanic Yoga : Kundalini & Luciferian Magick
Grey Aliens and the Harvesting of Souls
The Fraternitas Saturni: History, Doctrine, and Rituals of the Magical Order of the Brotherhood of Saturn
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finished: 2024-07-24 19:08:00.137778
The Little Prince
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finished: 2024-07-22 00:00:00
An aviator whose plane is forced down in the Sahara Desert encounters a little prince from a small planet who relates his adventures in seeking the secret of what is important in life. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/624419898 Rating: ★★★★★
A Fist Made and Then Un-Made
Firekeeper's Daughter
The Sun Also Rises
Jazz
The Left Hand of Darkness
The Hours
The Waves
Ficciones
Essays
The Walker: On Finding and Losing Yourself in the Modern City
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last updated: 2024-07-14 17:25:04.541713
The Meaning of Anxiety
The Life of Tu Fu
Hermit in Paris
Babel
Mrs. Dalloway
Wind, sands and stars
Pluto
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finished: 2022-06-30 00:00:00
In a distant future where sentient humanoid robots pass for human, someone or something is out to destroy the seven great robots of the world. Europol's top detective Gesicht is assigned to investigate these mysterious robot serial murders-the only catch is that he himself is one of the seven targets. Rating: ★★★★★
Sugars
• archive
last updated: 2024-07-06 12:15:06.327568
A collection of six short stories per volume that revolve around a chain of people. Dropped.
The Metamorphosis
Existential Physics
Algorithms to Live By
Computers: The Life Story of a Technology
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
Sinkhole: Three Crimes
The Mushroom at the End of the World
Why Are We ‘Artists'? 100 World Art Manifestos
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last updated: 2024-07-04 19:20:14.465639
Art is not a luxury. Art is a basic social need to which everyone has a right'. This extraordinary collection of 100 artists' manifestos from across the globe over the last 100 years brings together activists, post-colonialists, surrealists, socialists, nihilists and a host of other voices. From the Negritude movement in Africa and Martinique to Brazil's Mud/Meat Sewer Manifesto, from Iraqi modernism to Australia's Cyberfeminist Manifesto, they are by turns personal, political, utopian, angry, sublime and revolutionary. Some have not been published in English before; some were written in climates of censorship and brutality; some contain visions of a future still on the horizon. What unites them is the belief that art can change the world. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/999525134
The Velveteen Rabbit
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finished: 2024-04-07 04:00:00
Chronicles the story of a stuffed rabbit's desire to become real through the love of his owner. Rating: ★★★★★
The Woman Next Door
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finished: 2023-07-30 00:00:00
A collection of late-period Yoshiharu Tsuge stories, originally published 1981-1985. Rating: ★★★★★
Innocent Rouge
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finished: 2024-07-01 04:00:00
The eve of the French revolution, 1772: The eldest brother of the Sanson family, Charles-Henri, has grown as an executioner, while his sister Marie-Joseph has been living freely in Versailles. But then Marie-Joseph's first love, a man named Alain, is killed by aristocrats. The histories of innocents plunges into the arc of the crimson revolution, Rouge. Rating: ★★★★★
Innocent
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finished: 2024-06-30 00:00:00
In the 18th century, seeking "freedom and equality," the event that became the starting point of modern French society, the French Revolution, began. There was one more protagonist that lived within the darkness, Charles-Henri Sanson. He was the fourth generation family head of the Sanson family, and the executioner of Paris. This is the story of him nobly facing his harsh fate... Rating: ★★★★★
Western Lane
Billy Bat
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finished: 2024-06-30 19:23:33.260459
Billy Bat is a comic-in-a-comic and the real protagonist is a Japanese-American artist named Kevin Yamagata who draws Billy Bat for “Marble Comics”. Shortly after they transition to the artist in his studio with his assistant, two actual detectives, who look like Laurel and Hardy in Dick Tracy era suits and trench coats, knock on the door and appropriate Kevin’s room for the purpose of conducting surveillance on a room in an adjacent building. One of the detectives, the skinny “Laurel”, sees Kevin’s work and it turns out he’s a Billy Bat fan. The other chubby “Hardy” detective picks up a page and says that the characters look familiar and accuses Kevin of translating an old “Jap” comic. As Hardy remembers the comic he thinks Kevin is ripping off, we make another Urasawaesque time jump to 1949 Tokyo. Rating: ★★★★★
Rules For A Knight
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last updated: 2024-06-29 20:00:31.873597
It is 1483, and Sir Thomas Lemuel Hawke, a Cornish knight, is about to ride into battle. On the eve of his departure, he composes a letter to his four young children, consisting of twenty virtues that provide instruction on how to live a noble life, and on all the lessons, large and small, that he might have imparted to them himself were he not expecting to die on the battlefield. "Why am I alive? Where was I before I was born? What will happen to me when I die? Whatever well our lives are drawn from, it is deep, wild, mysterious, and unknowable ... "Rules for a Knight is many things: a code of ethics; an intimate record of a lifelong quest; a careful recounting of a knight's hardest won lessons, deepest aspirations, and most richly instructive failures; and an artifact, a relic of a father's exquisite love. Drawing on the ancient teachings of Eastern and Western philosophy and religion, on literature, and poetry, and on the great spiritual and political writings of our time, Ethan Hawke has written a parable that--in the story of a young man's journey toward a life of authenticity and meaning--captures the instinctive movement of the heart toward truth and beauty. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/910622022
Some People Need Killing
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last updated: 2024-06-29 20:00:21.686335
My job is to go to places where people die. I pack my bags, talk to the survivors, write my stories, then go home to wait for the next catastrophe. I don't wait very long.' Journalist Patricia Evangelista came of age in the aftermath of a street revolution that forged a new future for the Philippines. Three decades later, in the face of mounting inequality, the nation discovered the fragility of its democratic institutions under the regime of strongman Rodrigo Duterte. Some People Need Killing is Evangelista's meticulously reported and deeply human chronicle of the Philippines' drug war and Duterte's assault on the country's struggling democracy. For six years, Evangelista had the distinctive beat of chronicling the killings carried out by police and vigilantes in the name of Duterte's war on drugs - a war that has led to the slaughter of thousands - immersing herself in the world of killers and survivors and capturing the atmosphere of fear created when an elected president decides that some lives are worth less than others. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1375188300
The Book of Tokyo
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last updated: 2024-06-29 20:00:17.151308
A shape-shifter arrives at Tokyo harbour in human form, set to embark on an unstoppable rampage through the city’s train network… A young woman is accompanied home one night by a reclusive student, and finds herself lured into a flat full of eerie Egyptian artefacts… A man suspects his young wife’s obsession with picnicking every weekend in the city’s parks hides a darker motive… At first, Tokyo appears in these stories as it does to many outsiders: a city of bewildering scale, awe-inspiring modernity, peculiar rules, unknowable secrets and, to some extent, danger. Characters observe their fellow citizens from afar, hesitant to stray from their daily routines to engage with them. But Tokyo being the city it is, random encounters inevitably take place – a naïve book collector, mistaken for a French speaker, is drawn into a world he never knew existed; a woman seeking psychiatric help finds herself in a taxi with an older man wanting to share his own peculiar revelations; a depressed divorcee accepts an unexpected lunch invitation to try Thai food for the very first time… The result in each story is a small but crucial change in perspective, a sampling of the unexpected yet simple pleasure of other people’s company. As one character puts it, ‘The world is full of delicious things, you know.’ https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/868083750
Waking the Dead and Other Stories
• unread
last updated: 2024-06-29 19:54:16.597363
A shadow falls. A shape in the window. A sound at the door. The dead have risen. This book collects ten short stories of horror, tragedy and the things in between from the terrifying imagination of award-winning fictionist Yvette Tan. Are you ready to wake the dead?
Trese
Perfect Chemistry
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
The Goldfinch
虚の箱とゼロのマリア
The earth is online
Cultivation Chat Group
The Six of Crows Duology
Blockchain Chicken Farm
Introduction to Graph Theory
Cows in the Maze: And Other Mathematical Explorations
Math Hysteria: Fun and Games with Mathematics
Reverse Mathematics: Proofs from the Inside Out
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity
• unread
last updated: 2024-06-26 20:25:35.286987
The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero
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finished: 2023-01-28 00:00:00
another favorite. my grandpa gave this book to me years ago (he was a theoretical physicist). i've long loved mathematics, but this book added a whole new layer of appreciation of the field for me
Persepolis
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finished: 2022-07-28 07:00:00
one of my all-time favorites. read it for the first time when i was a sophomore in high school; have re-read it many times
The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography
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finished: 2024-01-07 08:00:00
a book i like to revisit often. i've loved puzzles and codes for as long as i can remember, and there's some fascinating societal/historical context and implications underlying the field of cryptography
Bossypants
Chances Are
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
Educated
How the Internet Happened
The Fire Next Time
Pageboy
Sigh, Gone
How Music Works
Poverty. by America
• unread
last updated: 2024-06-25 18:59:30.398959
heard a lot of good things about this one
Grokking Simplicity
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Range
The Poe Clan
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finished: 2022-12-22 00:00:00
The Poe Clan: a race of "vampirnellas" who feed on the energy of the living, whiling away the centuries in a village of roses where time and geography have no meaning. A brother and sister, Edgar and Marybelle, are initiated into the clan too young and, unless a wooden stake or a silver bullet should lead to their demise, are doomed to live for eternity. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1138132818 Rating: ★★★★★
Revolutionary Girl Utena
Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
They Were Eleven
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finished: 2022-12-29 00:00:00
Ten young space cadets are put onto a decommissioned spaceship as their final test. If they pass this test, their lifelong dreams of being valued people in their respective societies will come true. Their orders are to survive as long as they can with what they have. Once they arrive at the ship, they find that their crew has gained an eleventh member—and no one can remember the original lineup well enough to recognize which of them is the newcomer. As the days pass, the eleven cadets must deal with their suspicions of each other as well as the sudden knowledge that the spaceship is in a decaying orbit around a star, which is causing the temperature on the ship to rise. With this rise in temperature, a sickness begins to spread among the crew as they work to stabilize their orbit and determine who among them is the spy. Rating: ★★★★☆
Blood on the Tracks
• archive
last updated: 2024-06-25 15:19:11.818487
Seiichi Osabe is a shy middle school student living a relatively ordinary life. His mother, Seiko, is considered overprotective of him by others, although Seiichi is comfortable with the love and care from his mother and does not feel anything strange about her behavior. One day, Seiichi goes on a family hiking trip with his parents and paternal family. At one point, Seiichi's cousin, Shigeru, jokingly pushes Seiichi near a cliff edge, leading Seiko to quickly grab hold of Seiichi, protecting him from falling. The rest of the family starts laughing at Seiko over her "overprotective" act. A while later, Seiichi and Shigeru go to a higher cliff edge, and when Shigeru is on the cliff edge, Seiko, who was following them, approaches her nephew and pushes him off the cliff, giving a brief smile to her son. After the incident, where Shigeru is left in a comatose state and Seiichi was the only witness of what happened, he begins to discover how dangerous his mother's affection can become, and what follows is a series of events in which Seiichi's everyday life becomes a horror living under the disturbing protection of his own mother. Dropped.
Squire
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finished: 2024-06-22 00:00:00
Aiza has always dreamt of becoming a Knight. It's the highest military honor in the once-great Bayt-Sajji Empire, and as a member of the subjugated Ornu people, Knighthood is her only path to full citizenship. Ravaged by famine and mounting tensions, Bayt-Sajji finds itself on the brink of war once again, so Aiza can finally enlist in the competitive Squire training program. It's not how she imagined it, though. Aiza must navigate new friendships, rivalries, and rigorous training under the unyielding General Hende, all while hiding her Ornu background. As the pressure mounts, Aiza realizes that the "greater good" that Bayt-Sajji's military promises might not include her, and that the recruits might be in greater danger than she ever imagined. In this breathtaking and timely story, Aiza will have to choose, once and for all: loyalty to her heart and heritage, or loyalty to the Empire. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1249797769 Rating: ★★★★★
Space Ship EE
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finished: 2024-06-16 00:00:00
The first manga book by artist Aya Takano. She has taken the same creative approach as she does to her paintings, that is, to integrate the realm of extreme Sci-Fi imagination with the tiny gems she's found in her daily life. The narrative is inspired by the artist's own experiences where she struggled to come in terms with her daytime jobs, and those people who 'looked' against her. A Japanese girl called Noshi, or Takano herself portrayed as the protagonist, follows her desire to reach the stars in a stolen spacecraft until she gets lost and rescued by a traveling object called Spaceship EE. The ship carried thousands of war refugees from a colony planet traveling for 300 years in search of their home planet. She joined the passengers and was soon assigned to fight a real war instead of the battles in arcade games she used to be unbeatably good at on the earth. Rating: ★★★☆☆
20th Century Boys
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finished: 2022-12-21 00:00:00
Humanity, having faced extinction at the end of the 20th century, would not have entered the new millennium if it weren't for them. In 1969, during their youth, they created a symbol. In 1997, as the coming disaster slowly starts to unfold, that symbol returns. This is the story of a gang of boys who try to save the world. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/878466616 Rating: ★★★★★
A Poetry Handbook
It Chooses You
Chainsaw Man
Las Aventuras de Tintín
Yotsuba &!
Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Shinji Ikari Raising Project
• unread
last updated: 2024-06-21 15:18:21.791170
Neon Genesis Evangelion: Academic Record of Heaven's Descent
• unread
last updated: 2024-06-21 15:17:23.839537
Networks Without A Cause
Women in Clothes
Radical Technologies
Meander, Spiral, Explode
Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto
Defending a Place in the City: Localities and the Struggle for Urban Land in Metro Manila
• unread
last updated: 2024-06-21 15:09:20.033631
The Quartet of the Tiger Moon
The Philippines Is Not A Small Country
Non-Places
The Right To Maim
There Is No Right Way to Meditate
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finished: 2024-06-18 12:21:52.764633
Take a moment and breathe. With Yumi's uplifting guidance, you will dig deeper into your soul to discover the tranquility already surrounding you. In There Is No Right Way to Meditate, award-winning artist Yumi Sakugawa helps you tap into your inner self and finally find the peace that you've been seeking. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1381779024 Rating: ★★★★★
Tsubaki-chou Lonely Planet
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finished: 2024-06-18 00:00:00
Fumi Oono, second-year high-school student. Stuck with the debts of her father, she needs a job—fast. While she did indeed manage to find one as a housekeeper for THE Akatsuki Kibikino, it leaves much to be desired. After all, the novelist has a mean glare and an even worse attitude...And on top of that, she has to live with him?! Rating: ★★★☆☆
Brown Skin, White Minds
The Patchwork City
The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos
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last updated: 2024-06-18 09:44:22.707635
Under Bright Lights: Gay Manila and the Global Scene
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last updated: 2024-06-18 09:43:22.328417
Beauty Regimes
Warrior of the Light
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finished: 2024-06-18 00:00:00
A collection of philosophical stories and observations invites readers to live out dreams, embrace the uncertainty of life, and rise to a personal destiny. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/55739331 Rating: ★★★★★
Julia
The New Life
Bellies
Movement: How to Take Back Our Streets and Transform Our Lives
• unread
last updated: 2024-06-17 20:09:27.112349
The High Cost of Free Parking
Street Fight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution
Bicycle/Race: Transportation, Culture, and Resistance
• unread
last updated: 2024-06-17 20:07:39.223786
Gentrifier: A Memoir
Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
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last updated: 2024-06-17 20:06:17.385405
Feminist City: Claiming Space in a Man-made World
Rental Person Who Does Nothing
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finished: 2024-06-16 00:00:00
Shoji Morimoto was constantly being told that he was a 'do-nothing' because he lacked initiative. Dispirited and unemployed, it occurred to him that if he was so good at doing nothing, perhaps he could turn it into a business. And with one tweet, he began his business of renting himself out to do nothing. Morimoto, aka Rental Person, provides a fascinating service to the lonely and socially anxious. Sitting with a client undergoing surgery, accompanying a newly-divorced client to her favorite restaurant, visiting the site of a client's suicide attempt are just a few of his thousands of true life adventures. He is dependable, non-judgmental and committed to remaining a stranger and the curious encounters he shares are revelatory about both Japanese society and human psychology. In Rental Person Who Does Nothing, Morimoto chronicles his extraordinary experiences in his unique line of work and reflects on how we consider relationships, jobs and family in our search for meaningful connection and purpose in life. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1402810620 Rating: ★★★☆☆
The Alchemist
The Wren, The Wren
• archive
last updated: 2024-06-15 05:38:10.722005
Author: Anne Enright Format: Audiobook Rating: Thoughts:
The Will of the Many
My Suicide
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finished: 2022-12-26 00:00:00
Henri Roorda – a Swiss anarchist, math teacher, and columnist – shot himself in 1925, but left behind this essay, which examines his life and philosophy of “joyful pessimism.” In this baleful, little-known treatise, Henri Roorda presents debt and boredom in a world of capital as “his reasons for going,” and he dissects these motivations with such astuteness that his anatomy of himself and his perceived failures becomes spellbinding. My Suicide is both melancholy and humorous, political and deeply personal – a meditation on unfulfilled desires and the “uselessness of old age.” Rating: ★★★☆☆
The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
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last updated: 2024-06-14 16:38:03.912507
This mesmerizing collection features all of Ken’s award-winning and award-finalist stories, including: “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary” (Finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards), “Mono No Aware” (Hugo Award winner), “The Waves” (Nebula Award finalist), “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” (Nebula and Sturgeon award finalists), “All the Flavors” (Nebula award finalist), “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King” (Nebula Award finalist), and the most awarded story in the genre’s history, “The Paper Menagerie” (The only story to win the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards).
Aliasing
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last updated: 2024-06-14 16:35:41.962005
An alias is an assumed identity. In Aliasing the narration of fiction shifts like the weave of a binakul blanket, and the reader is confronted by a procession of simulacra that might be misunderstood as an alternative history of the Philippines. There are no falsehoods here since representation precedes and determines the real. The northern whirlpool weave that provides the novel with its title has been used to confuse evil spirits and protect its wearer while asleep. Almost traditional stories are woven into a post-history covering everyone from Macabebe Marie (the Mata Hari of Manila) to the Catholic mystic Emma de Guzman (known to followers as the Mother of Love, Peace and Joy). Reflecting the hybrid nature of our contemporary world, Aliasing reconfigures our understanding of who we are as a twice-told tall tale from the South… https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1028606046
Touching from a Distance: Ian Curtis and Joy Division
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last updated: 2024-06-14 16:34:58.582125
Revered by his peers and idolised by his fans, Ian Curtis left behind a legacy rich in artistic genius. But although mesmerising on stage, in his private life he was introverted and had desperate mood swings. Here, his widow pieces together why — despite his impending international fame and young family— Curtis took his own life on 18 May 1980. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/732332048
Hit Parade of Tears
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last updated: 2024-06-14 16:34:00.209643
Izumi Suzuki had ideas about doing things differently, ideas that paid little attention to the laws of physics, or the laws of the land. In this new collection, her skewed imagination distorts and enhances some of the classic concepts of science fiction and fantasy. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1355838108
You Are Not A Rock
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last updated: 2024-06-14 16:33:32.311045
A prescriptive and positive guide, illustrated with line drawings, making the case that mental well-being, like physical health, can be strengthened over time and with specific techniques. We all want to feel less anxiety, guilt, anger and sadness. We want to obsess less and be less lonely, free ourselves from our demons, compulsive habits, and stress. But as humans (unlike rocks) we experience all of these. And paradoxically, trying to avoid and control them only makes things worse. Having struggled with serious mental illness for many years himself, Mark Freeman has become a dedicated mental-health advocate and coach. He makes the case that instead of trying to feel less and avoid pain and stress, we need to build emotional fitness, especially our capacity for strength, balance and focus. With wit, compassion and depth of experience and anecdotes, he shows that we can recover from many mental disorders, from mild to very serious, at all ages and stages of life, and even if other methods have failed. Freeman's innovative approach makes use of a range of therapeutic techniques, mindfulness training, peer support, humor and common sense. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1022211501
Waiting For the Enemy
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last updated: 2024-06-14 16:26:43.583499
Personal account, by a Filipino reserve officer (University of the Philippines Reserve Officer Training Corps) assigned to the 88th Field Artillery (Philippine Scouts), just after the outbreak of the war. https://fhl.omeka.net/items/show/925
The End of the Moment We Had
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finished: 2024-06-14 00:00:00
On the eve of the Iraq War, a man and a woman meet in a nightclub in Tokyo. They go to a love hotel, and spend the next five days in a torrid affair. Written in a stream of consciousness, with the reader's perceptions shifting and melting into one another, what is remarkable in this story is not what happens, but the ability of the writer to enter the minds and memories of the protagonists. In the second story, a woman living in a damp flat obsesses on the filthy state of her dwelling. She remains in bed for the duration of the narrative, but the drama and tension of her inner life - spiralling further and further into her memories and anxieties… https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1010696330 Rating: ★★★☆☆
How Do You Live?
• unread
last updated: 2024-06-14 11:43:35.939802
The streets of Tokyo swarm below fifteen-year-old Copper as he gazes out into the city of his childhood. Struck by the thought of the infinite people whose lives play out alongside his own, he begins to wonder, how do you live? Considering life's biggest questions for the first time after the death of his father, Copper turns to his dear uncle for heart-warming wisdom. As the old man guides the boy on a journey of philosophical discovery, a timeless tale unfolds, offering a poignant reflection on what it means to be human. But when Copper betrays one of his new friends, how will he ask for forgiveness — and how can he forgive himself? How Do You Live? is the inspiring, transformative story of a young man who, like his namesake Copernicus, looks to the stars and uses his discoveries to answer the question of what kind of person he will grow up to be. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1275433559
The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On
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finished: 2022-12-22 00:00:00
Many have called our time dystopian. But The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On reminds us that apocalypse has already come in myriad ways for marginalized peoples. With lyric and tonal dexterity, these poems spin backwards and forwards in time—from Korean comfort women during World War II, to the precipice of climate crisis, to children wandering a museum in the future. They explore narrative distances and queer linearity, investigating on microscopic scales before soaring towards the universal. Wrestling with the griefs and distances of this apocalyptic world, Choi also imagines what togetherness--between Black and Asian and other marginalized communities, between living organisms, between children of calamity and conquest—could look like. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1291876979 Rating: ★★★★☆
Floating, Brilliant, Gone
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finished: 2022-12-22 00:00:00
Beginning in loss and ending in reflective elation, Floating, Brilliant, Gone explores life as a brief impossibility, "infinite / until it isn't." https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1300869738 Rating: ★★★★★
PTSD Radio
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finished: 2022-12-29 00:00:00
Carried into modern Japan from a forgotten past, the being known as Ogushi haunts and tortures humans of all kinds. Little is know about Ogushi's curse, except that it resides in an unexpected place: human hair. PTSD Radio takes something everyday and weaves it into a series of chilling, cryptic, twisted, repellant, and alluring manga stories that become more than what they first seem. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1294284967 Rating: ★★★★★
I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki
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finished: 2022-12-29 00:00:00
Baek Sehee is a successful young social media director at a publishing house when she begins seeing a psychiatrist about her - what to call it? - depression? She feels persistently low, anxious, endlessly self-doubting, but also highly judgmental of others. She hides her feelings well at work and with friends; adept at performing the calmness, even ease, her lifestyle demands. The effort is exhausting, overwhelming, and keeps her from forming deep relationships. This can't be normal. But if she's so hopeless, why can she always summon a desire for her favourite street food, the hot, spicy rice cake, tteokbokki? Is this just what life is like? Recording her dialogues with her psychiatrist over a 12-week period, Baek begins to disentangle the feedback loops, knee-jerk reactions and harmful behaviours that keep her locked in a cycle of self-abuse. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1334494607 Rating: ★★★☆☆
Convenience Store Woman
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finished: 2022-12-22 00:00:00
This is the story of Tokyo sales clerk Keiko Furukura. Keiko is an unusual person. She's someone who has never fit in - but when she takes a job at Smile Mart, she finally finds peace and purpose in her daily tasks. But there is also huge pressure on Keiko - to pursue a "real" career, to find a husband - and she feels forced to take desperate action in order to please the people around her. Is there room in this "normal" world for someone as strange as Keiko? https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1055687262 Rating: ★★★☆☆
Soft Science
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finished: 2022-12-22 00:00:00
Soft Science explores queer, Asian American femininity. A series of Turing Test-inspired poems grounds its exploration of questions not just of identity, but of consciousness — how to be tender and feeling and still survive a violent world filled with artificial intelligence and automation. We are dropped straight into the tangled intersections of technology, violence, erasure, agency, gender, and loneliness. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1048659059 Rating: ★★★★★
All the Lovers in the Night
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finished: 2022-08-23 00:00:00
Fuyuko Irie is a freelance copy editor in her mid-thirties. Working and living alone in a city where it is not easy to form new relationships, she has little regular contact with anyone other than her editor, Hijiri, a woman of the same age but with a very different disposition. When Fuyoku stops one day on a Tokyo street and notices her reflection in a storefront window, what she sees is a drab, awkward, and spiritless woman who has lacked the strength to change her life and decides to do something about it. As the long overdue change occurs, however, painful episodes from Fuyuko's past surface and her behavior slips further and further beyond the pale. All the Lovers in the Night is acute and insightful, entertaining and engaging; it will make readers laugh, and it will make them cry, but it will also remind them, as only the best books do, that sometimes the pain is worth it. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1280045825 Rating: ★★★☆☆
Mismatch
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last updated: 2024-06-14 11:29:12.615053
Sometimes designed objects reject their users: a computer mouse that doesn't work for left-handed people, for example, or a touchscreen payment system that only works for people who read English phrases, have 20/20 vision, and use a credit card. Something as simple as color choices can render a product unusable for millions. These mismatches are the building blocks of exclusion. In Mismatch, Kat Holmes describes how design can lead to exclusion, and how design can also remedy exclusion. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1025413063
Y/N
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last updated: 2024-06-14 11:26:10.256219
A novel about a Korean American woman living in Berlin whose obsession with a K-pop idol sends her to Seoul on a journey of literary self-destruction. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1317841467
The Woman in the Purple Skirt
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finished: 2022-08-23 00:00:00
A bestselling, prizewinning novel of obsession and psychological intrigue about two enigmatic unmarried women, one of whom manipulates the other from afar, by one of Japan's most acclaimed young writers. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1202305919 Rating: ★★★☆☆
My Alcoholic Escape From Reality
My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness
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finished: 2022-06-26 00:00:00
The heart-rending autobiographical manga that's taken the internet by storm! My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness is an honest and heartfelt look at one young woman's exploration of her sexuality, mental well-being, and growing up in our modern age. Told using expressive artwork that invokes both laughter and tears, this moving and highly entertaining single volume depicts not only the artist's burgeoning sexuality, but many other personal aspects of her life that will resonate with readers. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/963745449 Rating: ★★★★★
Almond
Colorful
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finished: 2022-03-27 00:00:00
The soul of the deceased narrator, cleansed of all its memories of its past life, is heading toward the darkness when it suddenly encounters an angel. 'Congratulations!' the angel exclaims. 'You're the winner of our lottery! You're being given a second chance!' The next thing it knows, the soul is back on earth, occupying the body of fifteen-year-old Makoto who is planning to poison himself. Makoto is friendless, and his family shows him little love. Unable to feel affection for the people around him, he spends his time drawing or playing cards with the angel. But when it comes to discussions of which high school he should go to, Makoto is surprised to realize that his family and his teachers genuinely care about him. He has words with the angel: 'I want to give back Makoto's family the real Makoto.' The angel agrees, but on one condition: the soul has to remember his original mistake. 'Look around you,' adds the angel. 'There are clues everywhere.' Eventually, the soul remembers: he killed someone. And the person he killed? Himself, which is to say, Makoto Kobayashi…" https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1157753768 Rating: ★★★★★
Breasts and Eggs
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finished: 2022-05-22 00:00:00
Breasts and Eggs paints a portrait of contemporary womanhood in Japan and recounts the intimate journeys of three women as they confront oppressive mores and their own uncertainties on the road to finding peace and futures they can truly call their own. It tells the story of three women: the thirty-year-old Natsu, her older sister, Makiko, and Makiko's daughter, Midoriko. Makiko has traveled to Tokyo in search of an affordable breast enhancement procedure. She is accompanied by Midoriko, who has recently grown silent, finding herself unable to voice the vague yet overwhelming pressures associated with growing up. Her silence proves a catalyst for each woman to confront her fears and frustrations. On another hot summer's day ten years later, Natsu, on a journey back to her native city, struggles with her own indeterminate identity as she confronts anxieties about growing old alone and childless. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1144895160 Rating: ★★★★★
Goodnight Punpun
• archive
last updated: 2024-06-14 01:41:05.122112
A Japanese manga about Onodera Punpun, a normal child depicted in the form of a bird. The story follows him as he copes with his dysfunctional family and friends, his love interest, his oncoming adolescence and his hyperactive mind. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/944958705 Dropped.
Heaven
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finished: 2023-12-29 00:00:00
A bold foray into new literary territory, Kawakami's novel is told in the voice of a 14-year-old student subjected to relentless torment for having a lazy eye. Instead of resisting, the boy chooses to suffer in complete resignation. The only person who understands what he is going through is a female classmate who suffers similar treatment at the hands of her tormentors. These raw and realistic portrayals of bullying are counterbalanced by textured exposition of the philosophical and religious debates concerning violence to which the weak are subjected. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1299444175 Rating: ★★★★★
I Think I Am In Friend-Love With You
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finished: 2024-05-28 00:00:00
Through a confessional letter, comic book artist Yumi Sakugawa illustrates the deep, however platonic, nature of friend-love. https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/869298694 Rating: ★★★★★
Ms Ice Sandwich
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finished: 2024-05-16 00:00:00
A young boy returns obsessively to a supermarket sandwich counter, entranced by the beauty of the woman who works there. Her aloof demeanour and electric blue eyelids make him feel the most intense joy he's ever known. He calls her Ms Ice Sandwich, and he wants nothing more than to spend his days watching her coolly slip sandwiches into bags. But life keeps getting in the way -- there's his beloved grandmother's illness, and a faltering friendship with his classmate Tutti, who she invites him into her private world. Wry, intimate and wonderfully skewed, Ms Ice Sandwich is a poignant depiction of the naivety and wisdom of youth, just as it is passing… https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1202287820 Rating: ★★★★☆
Phantom Thief Jeanne
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finished: 2024-06-13 00:00:00
High school student Maron Kusakabe has a secret: she's Phantom Thief Jeanne. She sneaks into private art collections to steal paintings in which demons reside. Jeanne's task is to seal the demons before they can devour human hearts. So far she's been able to evade the police on her midnight outings, but now another thief has come onto the scene—Phantom Thief Sinbad— and he's trying to take the paintings before she does! https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/871691459 Rating: ★★☆☆☆
The Brothers Karamazov
Wise Man's Fear
The Timeless Way of Building
A Pattern Language
ZZZ
Notes On Self-Care For Creative Humans
A little Life
The Color of Law
martyr!
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finished: 2024-06-03 00:00:00
format: kindle rating: 5/5 thoughts: this may be my favorite book i’ve ever read. I wanted to rip out my eyes, my throat. my feet and stomach were ablaze and I am learning to swallow and digest the weight of being a human. my body is hollow and is yearning to be filled. this book is so special, nothing short of a miracle, and I will forever be changed.
eeeeee
The Collected Stories of Jessica Zafra
The Secret History
Recursion
the death and life of great american cities
Rest is Resistance
Tokyo Ueno Station
Atomic Habits
Beautiful World, Where Are You
The Hidden Life of Trees
Sea of Tranquility
the medium is the message
eternal echoes
be here, now
dubliners
house of flame and shadow
paradise rot
rouge
bunny
the power of now
homesick for another world
bluets
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finished: 2024-05-27 18:22:03.562883
this might be because i'm high functioning in every mental health issue i've been diagnosed (which isn't a badge of honor, it's a crutch). but sadness can be beautiful and beauty can come out of sadness, if you allow yourself to see that call to transmute your innerworld into some body of work. bluets is proof of that. probably one of my favorite books i've read this year, thus far.
order without design: how markets shape cities
happy city
human transit: how clearer thinking about public transit can enrich our communities and our lives
• unread
last updated: 2024-05-27 05:54:41.641362
the power broker
the image of the city
design of cities
walkable city: how downtown can save america, one step at a time
• unread
last updated: 2024-05-27 05:47:53.693928
the color of law: a forgotten history of how our government segregated america
• unread
last updated: 2024-05-27 05:45:49.761024
Name of the Wind
Four Thousand Weeks
Four Thousand Weeks
Just Mercy
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
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finished: 2023-10-15 07:00:00
Author: Grace Paley Format: Paperback Rating: 4.5/5 Thoughts: Incredibly chewy writing, her characters are so volatile and horrible and raw. I loved this collection following several abstract story lines.
Doctor Zhivago
Radical Candor
The Coaching Habit
La Storia
Lies and Sorcery
Contempt
The Tartar Steppe
The Moon and the Bonfires
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
Family Lexicon
Christ Stopped at Eboli
Invisible Cities
Arturo’s Island
Our Ancestors
The Day of the Owl
The Conformist
Duchamp Is My Lawyer: The Polemics, Pragmatics, and Poetics of UbuWeb
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finished: 2024-05-17 04:00:00
Incredible book, that I loved, about the history of UbuWeb, its raison d'etre, legal framework, and a section and description of picks from the collection. Deeply inspiring. Best book I have read in a long time.
After the Revolution
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finished: 2024-05-17 04:00:00
You know, on the one hand I got dropped into the action and enjoyed the speculative post-USA civil war narrative. I also liked the burner-ish body-mod cyborg people. On the other hand, I do not enjoy reading about death and war and continual battle descriptions. It's a little like The Matrix or something, so yes, it'll probably turn into a TV miniseries at some point. B-
Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia
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finished: 2024-05-17 04:00:00
Though this is a 'pleasure topic' this was not at all a pleasure read for me. Despite its 'novella' size it too was something of a slog, though not on the scale of the Dawn of Everything. These academic anarchists certainly match their academic kin for heaviness of their texts. Not a conversational book. The point is that pirates, themselves largely non-authoritarian despite the appearance of fierce leadership in stories or during times of battle, settled and married in to local Malagasy culture. Their wives, themselves political intentional political actors seeking influence by being insider-outsiders, their offspring, and the communities that formed favored conversation and various forms of relatively non-authoritarian rule. That about sums it up. The book goes through the details, largely through speculation. It posits this period as being an important but less-acknowledged part of the project of 'The Enlightenment' and then sends us on our way. Okay. Somewhat interesting. I wish it had been 20 pages instead of 150, but there you go.
The Drowned World
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finished: 2024-05-17 04:00:00
I found this one on a walk in Red Hook on my birthday with Amelia. It turns out this is Ballard's first novel, and I really enjoyed it. It tells the story of a future Earth where global warming has caused the ice caps to melt (so it seems) and most of Earth is plunged under water. The main character Robert Kerans is a biologist with a small team who has been studying the plants and animals that have flourished as the human population has fled or died. It's unclear if most humans have left for another planet (I believe so). Earth is continuing to get too hot, and most days the temperature is in the 130s to 150s, and at night it's a barely tolerable 90 degrees, usually with air conditioning able to get it down to 80. The main character, his lover and much of the crew appears to be affected by the conditions, and they seem to regress into more primitive brainspace, almost a psychedelic or muted affect. They resist leaving when the crew is ordered to evacuate. Soon an evil captain, almost a pirate really, arrives with his picaresque crew, looting the place, and alternately intrigued by and resentful of Kerans and his compatriots. I was glued to the page as I wanted to learn what would happen, all the twists and turns. A unique post-climate-collapse apocalyptic story, highly recommended.
Bike Lanes Are White Lanes
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finished: 2024-05-17 04:00:00
An important indictment of mainstream urban bicycle advocacy as practiced favors upwardly mobile white lifestyle riders while excluding POC and/or poorer riders. The author does a good job explaining her values, and walks through three case studies of bicycle advocay or programs and how they intersect with racial and class dynamics. It shows why communities of color experiencing gentrification could tie bicycle advocacy work to those same forces. The chapter on solutions and possibilities at the end is by far the shortest, and hopefully other books and projects could take off where this one ends. I am thankful the TSNR ride is such a diverse ride, and thinking through what I've learned from this book and how it is reflected in the makeup and leadership of that group.
The Abolition of Work
Against the Written Word: Toward a Universal Illiteracy
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finished: 2024-05-17 04:00:00
I love the tone and little funny colophon type stuff like the refusal to have an author description and there's a warning instead of an intro. It's a collection of shorter essays and public talks and even a play of sorts, or two. OVerall this was not nearly as fun as the first Psychic Soviet book. But a few shorter chapters were great. I definitely laughed a few times while reading on the subway.
How to Build a Low-Tech Internet?
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finished: 2024-05-17 04:00:00
A paper version of the inspirational web-blog/'journal.' I've really enjoyed reading it online, and I get some of the flavor of that, and have been able to read on the train and outdoors in the park for example, but the design other than the cover is really bland. In fact, I thought it was a template export, maybe with Latex or somesuch, but hee hee hee, I looked at the colophon just to verify and it was actually 'designed!' by several folks. They should have let the cover design person design the internals, or just used a template! I'm going on and on, but I did enjoy this, even if I've prevously read some of the material online before. It's a useful reference. The title is a question mark, and true to form, they don't answer it but just pose questions.
Graffiti on No or Low Dollars
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finished: 2024-05-17 04:00:00
Surely a most bizarre pseudonym for one of the most bizarre road diaries I've ever read. Disjointed, hitchihiking and driving, non-linear I mean. Salty, told by a drug user ne'ver-do-well. A better version of On The Road. Some of the short chapters are just divine. Inspired writing. I can't believe it's so minimally self-published. Incredible stuff. One of the best books I've ever lucked into reading. I'll re-visit this one every few years.
The Stranger in the Woods
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finished: 2024-05-17 04:00:00
A fascinating book that I'm glad I read, though I also felt bad for Chris Knight. This person persisted, even when it was clear Chris wanted to be left alone. He's never quite able to penetrate Chris's mind, though he tries. I felt particularly incensed by the court decision forcing him to show up weekly, do drug/alcohol tests, and think they should have accepted a fine and let him go and maybe he could have gone back into the woods rather than live depressed in the society he had tried to escape. This is the story of the forced socialization of a man that wanted to live outside of society, and that is truly sad.
Every Man For Himself and God Against All
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finished: 2024-05-17 04:00:00
I picked this up a few weeks ago, got it signed by Werner Herzog himself! I was the last in the line when he spoke at Pioneerworks. The book is a bit all over the place, and Werner is pompous, but it does cover his entire life, his ideas, values, how he works, and is inspiring. He's one of my favorite creators. He's really a poet, as he says. What I took away from this is his "hard work" is just continually putting in the time. Like a lot of my other favorites, he has just made an extraordinary amount of material: films, operas mostly. And some books. An inspiring book about living a creative life.
Pink Noises
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finished: 2024-05-17 04:00:00
Great collection of short stories by Dick. Some only mild interesting but others contain whole worlds, ecosystems, movie plots, series and much larger narratives. Favorites include the horror story The Father-Thing about a child that realizes his dad has been eaten and replaced by an alien; The Last of the Masters, about a roving band in an anarchist society looking for old machinery to destroy lest it leads to warring with the robots again; Pay for the Printer, about a society with living almost-3d-printers that keep a reliant society going through recreating past objects and technology even as its members have lost the knowledge of the basics of constructing anything by hand. There are other favorites here like We will Remember it for you Wholesale (Total Recall) and The Minority Report. Recommended.
Terraform: Watch/Worlds/Burn
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finished: 2024-05-17 04:00:00
A large anthology of science fiction, speculative fiction and farcical stories of the near future. The ones that were too farcical grated on me, insulted my intelligence, but many others were quite good, conveying whole complex worlds in short stories only a couple pages long. Because the stories are so short, they are packed in, and when I loved a short story I quickly moved on to another that might be bland or humorless and found myself forgetting earlier ones. I felt like I should take more detailed notes of the whole book. Overall, some real gems here and I'd definitely recommend it especially for someone that reads in lots of spurts, before bed, while traveling, etc. The other thing I liked is that it's almost all writers I didn't know previously.
The Philip K. Dick Reader
Moby Dick
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finished: 2024-05-17 04:00:00
I loved the queer storyline with Queequeg. I found the language exciting, strange, compelling - especially in the beginning of the book. The LibriVox reader made th e language more exciting as well. I loved his pronunciation of "harponeers" and his voicing of Captain Ahab inspired. But I found the book dragging in places, especially in the middle. And the end is so sudden! Right when we finally meet the whale. The story of the white whale's pursuit by Ahab is not nearly as interesting without the specific language and experimentation of the book. "The first modern novel." I want to read a tale from Queequeg's experience.
Dungeon Hacks
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finished: 2024-05-17 04:00:00
I've read this before but I'm working on a roguelike again myself, this time trying to complete a medium size one, and I'm reading this for inspiration the last week of school. I enjoy the tales of the languages, approaches and early "open source" university computing culture.
Dawn (Lilith's Brood)
A Gentleman in Moscow
The World for Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth's Resources
• reading
last updated: 2024-05-16 01:42:34.433999
nath's recc
The Rise of Kyoshi
Selected Cronicas
Lonesome Dove
Bitter Water Opera
Exhalation
Factfulness
Stoner
The Overstory
Metaphysics
Experience and Nature
The Song of the Cell
Complications
Theory of Knowledge
I am a Strange Loop
Academic Ableism
Sitting Pretty
The Prophets
The Visible Unseen
Lost in Work
Astrology and the Authentic Self
Illness as Metaphor
Motherhood
Now is Not the Time to Panic
Fight Night
Single on Purpose
The Deep Places
Dept of Speculation
Wabi-Sabi
Pure Colour
Chaos
Radical Wholeness
Tender Points
Wired for Love
Pain Woman Takes Your Keys
Sick
Dyscalculia
Outline
The Employees
The Hole
Spy of the First Person
Big Swiss
The Song of Our Scars
Notes from Underground
Know Your Endo
Be Not Afraid of Love
The Art of Loving
The Doctor Will See You Now
Rest is Resistance
Saving Time
Being Mortal
Dinosaurs
The Eden Project
The Friend
We
How Should a Person Be?
Whereabouts
The Argonauts
Fuccboi
Sea of Tranquility
Against Creativity
The Undying
Healing the Soul
Arrangements in Blue
Planets in Transit
Body Work
In the Dream House
Head Above Water
Carnal Acts
Brilliant Imperfection
On Being Ill
Care Work
Who is Wellness For?
Conquer Chiari
Natural Causes
Witches, Midwives, and Nurses
Chiron
Trick Mirror
Between Two Kingdoms
Having and Being Had