booked & busy
Items in this hypelist
Reading
A Little Life
Hanya Yanagihara · 2015
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (NPR) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE A Little Life follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves.
Finished
The Nakano Thrift Shop
Hiromi Kawakami · 2017
This "gentle, humorous novel" follows a young Japanese woman as she yearns for the love of a reluctant coworker ( The Wall Street Journal). The objects for sale at the Nakano Thrift Shop appear as commonplace as the staff and customers who handle them. But like those staff and customers, they hold many secrets. If examined carefully, they show the signs of innumerable extravagances, of immeasurable pleasure and pain, and of the deep mysteries of the human heart. Hitomi, the inexperienced young woman who works the register, has fallen for her coworker, the oddly reserved Takeo. Unsure of how to attract his attention, she seeks advice from her employer's sister, Masayo, whose sentimental entanglements make her a somewhat unconventional guide. But thanks in part to Masayo, Hitomi will come to realize that love, desire, and intimacy require acceptance not only of idiosyncrasies but also of the delicate waltz between open and hidden secrets, in this novel from the author of Strange Weather in Tokyo that "captures an untranslatable Japanese mood" ( The New York Times). "Uses a series of vignettes to chronicle a girl's time working at Mr. Nakano's secondhand store in Tokyo . . . Pleasant, leisurely prose." — Publishers Weekly "Hiromi Kawakami's charming novel illuminates moments of kindness, love and friendship that pop up like the unexpected treasures amid the shop's dusty collection of pretty mismatched bowls and plates, castoff eyeglasses, task lamps and old electric fans." —Minneapolis Star-Tribune
White Nights
Fyodor Dostoevsky · 2019
White Nights is the classic novella by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. It follows the story of a man who is alone and isolated in St. Petersburg. He is desperate for companionship, and when he meets a young woman he believes may be his soulmate, he is filled with hope. Through his conversations with her, he attempts to understand the meaning of love, loneliness and friendship. White Nights is a timeless story of love, longing and human connection. Its beautiful prose and thought-provoking themes have resonated with readers for generations. This edition is based on the 1918 translation by Constance Garnett (1861-1946).<br/><br/>Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and philosopher whose psychological depth and insight into the human condition made him one of the most celebrated authors of all time. His works, including Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, Notes from the Underground, and The Idiot, have been translated into more than 170 languages and are considered to be some of the greatest works of literature in the world. Dostoevsky explored the depths of human emotions and experience, focusing on themes such as morality, suffering, and redemption. His works are often credited with pioneering existentialism and introducing the theme of nihilism to literature. Dostoevsky was also an influential political thinker, advocating for social justice and challenging the status quo of the time. His writing continues to inspire readers around the world and his legacy lives on as one of the greatest authors of all time.
We Are Okay
Nina LaCour · 2019
<b>NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An achingly beautiful novel about grief, the enduring power of friendship, and the healing effects of kindness, from the award-winning author of <i>Hold Still</i><br><br>WINNER OF THE MICHAEL L. PRINTZ AWARD • ONE OF <i>TIME</i>’S BEST YOUNG ADULT BOOKS OF ALL TIME • <i>KIRKUS REVIEWS</i> BEST YOUNG ADULT BOOK OF THE CENTURY</b><br><br>“<b>Short, poetic and gorgeously written . . . The world LaCour creates is fragile but profoundly humane.” —<i>The New York Times Book Review<br></i></b><br><i>You go through life thinking there’s so much you need. . . . Until you leave with only your phone, your wallet, and a picture of your mother. </i><br><br>Marin hasn’t spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks—not even her best friend, Mabel. But even thousands of miles away from the California coast, at college in New York, Marin still feels the pull of the life and tragedy she’s tried to outrun. Now, months later, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin waits. Mabel is coming to visit, and Marin will be forced to face everything that’s been left unsaid and finally confront the loneliness that has made a home in her heart.<br><br>An intimate whisper that packs an indelible punch, <i>We Are Okay</i> is Nina LaCour at her finest. This gorgeously crafted and honest portrayal of grief will leave readers urgent to reach across any distance to reconnect with the people they love.<br><br><br><b>Praise for <i>We Are Okay</i> <br></b><br>“<b>Nina LaCour treats her emotions so beautifully and with such empathy</b>.” —Bustle<br><br>★ <b>“Exquisite</b>.<b>”</b> —<i>Kirkus</i><br><br>★ “LaCour paints a captivating depiction of loss, bewilderment, and emotional paralysis . . . <b>raw and beautiful</b>.” —<i>Booklist</i><br><br>★ “Beautifully crafted . . . . <b>A quietly moving, potent novel</b>.” —<i>SLJ</i><br><br>★ “A <b>moving portrait of a girl struggling to rebound </b>after everything she’s known has been thrown into disarray.” —<i>Publishers Weekly</i><br><br>★"<b>Bittersweet and hopeful</b> . . . poetic and skillfully crafted." —<i>Shelf Awareness</i><br><br>“So lonely and beautiful that I could hardly breathe. <b>This is a perfect book</b>.” —Stephanie Perkins, bestselling author of <i>Anna and the French Kiss</i><br><br>“<b>As beautiful as the best memories</b>, as sad as the best songs, as hopeful as your best dreams.”<br>—Siobhan Vivian, bestselling author of <i>The Last Boy and Girl in the World</i><br><br>“You can feel every peak and valley of Marin’s emotional journey on your skin, in your gut. <b>Beautifully written, heartfelt, and deeply real</b>.” —Adi Alsaid, author of <i>Never Always Sometimes</i> and <i>Let’s Get Lost</i>
Nothing to See Here
Kevin Wilson · 2019
A New York Times Bestseller • A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick! Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, People, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, TIME, The A.V. Club, Buzzfeed, and PopSugar “I can’t believe how good this book is.... It’s wholly original. It’s also perfect.... Wilson writes with such a light touch.... The brilliance of the novel [is] that it distracts you with these weirdo characters and mesmerizing and funny sentences and then hits you in a way you didn’t see coming. You’re laughing so hard you don’t even realize that you’ve suddenly caught fire.” —Taffy Brodesser-Akner, author of Fleishman is in Trouble, New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author of The Family Fang, a moving and uproarious novel of literary fiction about a woman who finds meaning in her life when she begins caring for two children with a remarkable ability. Lillian and Madison were unlikely roommates and yet inseparable friends at their elite boarding school. But then Lillian had to leave the school unexpectedly in the wake of a scandal and they’ve barely spoken since. Until now, when Lillian gets a letter from Madison pleading for her help. Madison’s twin stepkids are moving in with her family and she wants Lillian to be their caretaker. However, there’s a catch: the twins spontaneously combust when they get agitated, flames igniting from their skin in a startling but beautiful way. Lillian is convinced Madison is pulling her leg, but it’s the truth. Thinking of her dead-end life at home, the life that has consistently disappointed her, Lillian, a truly unforgettable and witty protagonist, figures she has nothing to lose. Over the course of one humid, demanding summer, Lillian and the twins learn to trust each other—and stay cool—while also staying out of the way of Madison’s buttoned-up politician husband. Surprised by her own ingenuity yet unused to the intense feelings of protectiveness she feels for them, Lillian ultimately begins to accept that she needs these strange children as much as they need her—urgently and fiercely. Couldn’t this be the start of the amazing life she’d always hoped for? With white-hot wit and a big, tender heart, Kevin Wilson has written his best book yet—a most unusual story of parental love and the power of a found family.
Damned
Chuck Palahniuk · 2012
<p>“As gleefully, vividly, hilariously obscene as you'd expect. . . . Irreverent and hugely entertaining." —NPR <br><br> From the bestselling author of Fight Club comes a dark and brilliant satire about adolescence, Hell, and the Devil. <br> <br> Madison is the thirteen-year-old daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire. Abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, she dies over the holiday, presumably of a marijuana overdose. The last thing she remembers is getting into a town car and falling asleep. Then she's waking up in Hell. Literally. Madison soon finds that she shares a cell with a motley crew of young sinners: a cheerleader, a jock, a nerd, and a punk rocker, united by their doomed fate, like an afterschool detention for the damned. Together they form an odd coalition and march across the unspeakable landscape of Hell--full of used diapers, dandruff, WiFi blackout spots, evil historical figures, and one horrific call center--to confront the Devil himself.<br><br></p>
Patron Saints of Nothing
Randy Ribay · 2019
<b>A NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • <b>A powerful coming-of-age story about grief, guilt, and the risks a Filipino-American teenager takes to uncover the truth about his cousin's murder.<br><br>A <i>Kirkus Reviews</i> Best Young Adult Book of the Century</b><br></b><br><b>"Brilliant, honest, and equal parts heartbreaking and soul-healing." --Laurie Halse Anderson, author of <i>SHOUT </i></b><br><br><b>"A singular voice in the world of literature." --Jason Reynolds, author of <i>Long Way Down</i></b><br><br>Jay Reguero plans to spend the last semester of his senior year playing video games before heading to the University of Michigan in the fall. But when he discovers that his Filipino cousin Jun was murdered as part of President Duterte's war on drugs, and no one in the family wants to talk about what happened, Jay travels to the Philippines to find out the real story.<br><br>Hoping to uncover more about Jun and the events that led to his death, Jay is forced to reckon with the many sides of his cousin before he can face the whole horrible truth -- and the part he played in it.<br><br>As gripping as it is lyrical, <i>Patron Saints of Nothing</i> is a page-turning portrayal of the struggle to reconcile faith, family, and immigrant identity.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Ottessa Moshfegh · 2018
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time, NPR, Amazon,Vice, Bustle, The New York Times, The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Entertainment Weekly, The AV Club, & Audible<br/><br/>A New York Times Bestseller<br/><br/>“One of the most compelling protagonists modern fiction has offered in years: a loopy, quietly furious pillhead whose Ambien ramblings and Xanaxed b*tcheries somehow wend their way through sad and funny and strange toward something genuinely profound.” — Entertainment Weekly<br/><br/>“Darkly hilarious . . . [Moshfegh’s] the kind of provocateur who makes you laugh out loud while drawing blood.” —Vogue<br/><br/>From one of our boldest, most celebrated new literary voices, a novel about a young woman's efforts to duck the ills of the world by embarking on an extended hibernation with the help of one of the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature and the battery of medicines she prescribes.<br/><br/>Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?<br/><br/>My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.
The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger · 1951
Anyone who has read J.D. Salinger's New Yorker stories, particularly <i>A Perfect Day for Bananafish</i>, <i>Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut</i>, <i>The Laughing Man</i>, and <i>For Esme--With Love and Squalor</i>, will not be surprised by the fact that his first novel is full of children. <br><br>The hero-narrator of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. <br><br>The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. <br><br>There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices--but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.
Crying in H Mart
Michelle Zauner · 2021
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American—“in losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself” (NPR). • CELEBRATING OVER ONE YEAR ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her. Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Ocean Vuong · 2019
A New York Times bestseller • Nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction • Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century “A lyrical work of self-discovery that’s shockingly intimate and insistently universal…Not so much briefly gorgeous as permanently stunning.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post “This is one of the best novels I’ve ever read...Ocean Vuong is a master. This book a masterpiece.”—Tommy Orange, author of There There and Wandering Stars On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard. With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years. Named a Best Book of the Year by: GQ, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Library Journal, TIME, Esquire, The Washington Post, Apple, Good Housekeeping, The New Yorker, The New York Public Library, Elle.com, The Guardian, The A.V. Club, NPR, Lithub, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, Mother Jones, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, and more!
