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Appointment in Samarra
Appointment in Samarra
John O'Hara | 2008 | Fiction & Poetry
(0 Ratings)
Book Favorite

"This is a searing novel set in 1930s America, and the story unfolds in just over 36 hours. It is a book about sex, alcohol, class, and dreamers. Devastating in its conclusion, it completely drew me into the atmosphere and pressure of what it must have been like to alive in America at that time. All details are present—the cocktails, the cars, and in this book most overwhelmingly, the unhappiness."

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Love in the Time of Cholera
Love in the Time of Cholera
Gabriel García Márquez | 2007 | Fiction & Poetry
7.7 (6 Ratings)
Book Favorite

"I was working at a funeral home when I found this novel. Being 14, I did a lot of thinking about death, and, conversely, how to live. Love in the Time of Cholera made me feel as if I were walking next to the characters as they laughed, loved, lived and died in a world filled with spirits. Márquez raised my consciousness by taking me gently into other realms."

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Small Gods (Discworld #13)
Small Gods (Discworld #13)
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
An early(ish) Discworld novel, which primarily takes place centuries before the events in any of the other books.

This one concerns itself mainly with religion and philosophy, and shows how what you think of his books (in general) depends on the subject matter within: I always thought this was one of his best, whereas others (including my dad) seem to think it is one of his weakest.
  
My Heart and Other Black Holes
My Heart and Other Black Holes
Jasmine Warga | 2015 | Fiction & Poetry, Young Adult (YA)
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Favorite

"I read this book in one sitting, overnight, and I'm sure many others will find themselves sharing in this experience. MY HEART AND OTHER BLACK HOLES is a panoramic novel about existence, and Aysel and Roman's relationship - suicide partners - is an impressive combination of tragic and life-affirming. There's so much more I want to say, but I should STFU now until there are at least ARCs out in the world."

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Aimee Bender recommended Remainder in Books (curated)

 
Remainder
Remainder
Tom McCarthy | 2015 | Fiction & Poetry
(0 Ratings)
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"My favorite part of this novel is how the main character is so fixated on re-creating a very specific scene from his past, and he's not even sure why. It's an act of theater, and memory, and something powerfully unconscious — and we are witness to the process. He is a kind of inverted Proust, making the madeleine from scratch to evoke the thing you didn't know needed evoking."

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Doug Ruskoff recommended Jude the Obscure in Books (curated)

 
Jude the Obscure
Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy, Ralph Pite | 2015 | Essays
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Favorite

"The first novel I read that held together on a regular plane as well as thematic one - as story as well as a symbolic journey. There could be others that work like Jude, but something about this book - the way the author is dealing with ideas like evolution along with the collapse of class culture - made it feel like a precursor to modernism. Like the birth of modernism."

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Lena Dunham recommended Of Human Bondage in Books (curated)

 
Of Human Bondage
Of Human Bondage
W. Somerset Maugham | 2000 | Fiction & Poetry
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Favorite

"I read this when my first boyfriend broke up with me and wept across three continents—weeping seems to be a theme today. The protagonist is one of those assholes who thinks he’s going to ‘save’ a sex worker (the politics are rough), but the obsession and abandonment shit is on point. Then I bragged to my college English teacher and he was like ‘oh, that’s a lesser British novel.’ Whoops!"

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Ottessa Moshfegh recommended I Must Have You in Books (curated)

 
I Must Have You
I Must Have You
JoAnna Novak | 2017 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry
(0 Ratings)
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"Reading this novel is like going back to a life I didn't have, but one that feels eerily familiar, as a teenager in high school. There's such a force in her writing, which is the force of Novak—she looks like a sweet person on the outside, which she is, but inside she is a tornado of passion and strength enough to crush the planet with her pinky finger."

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Enchantress of Numbers: A Novel of Ada Lovelace
Enchantress of Numbers: A Novel of Ada Lovelace
Jennifer Chiaverini | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry
6
6.5 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
Jennifer Chiaverini’s historical fiction novel about Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace, takes us back to 19th century England, to discover a woman whose mathematical insights may have been instrumental in making the essential the connections that led to today’s computers. You can read my review of this book about the unfortunately short life of Lady Lovelace here.
https://tcl-bookreviews.com/2017/12/16/a-calculating-woman/
  
Warlight
Warlight
Michael Ondaatje | 2018 | Fiction & Poetry
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
How lucky am I that I got to read and review my favorite author’s newest novel before its publication date? Yes, Michael Ondaatje has a new book coming out shortly, and if you want to know what I thought of it (as if you can’t guess already), I invite you to read my review of this book on my blog, here.
https://tcl-bookreviews.com/2018/04/28/consequences-of-peace/