tbr
Items in this hypelist
asian lit
Severance
Ling Ma · 2018
Please Look After Mother
Shin Kyung-Sook · 2022
Concerning My Daughter
Kim Hye-jin · 2022
Smaller and Smaller Circles
F.H. Batacan · 2015
Even Ducks Get Liver Cancer and other medical misadventures
Wilfredo Liangco · 2023
<p>Blunt, hilarious, and heartbreaking, Even Ducks Get Liver Cancer is a candid and hysterical account of the realities of life in and out of the Philippine General Hospital.</p><p><br></p><p>Will Liangco's collection of essays on his years of training as a medical intern and oncology fellow is everything you need to know about the making of a doctor: sleepless nights, late stipends, and life-and-death decisions in the context of the imperfect Philippine healthcare system.</p><p><br></p><p>Read, laugh (and laugh again) at Liangco's misadventures and how he overcomes the never-ending trials on the human spirit. </p>
classics
Madonna in a Fur Coat
The bestselling Turkish classic of love and longing in a changing world, available in English for the first time. 'It is, perhaps, easier to dismiss a man whose face gives no indication of an inner life. And what a pity that is: a dash of curiosity is all it takes to stumble upon treasures we never expected.' A shy young man leaves his home in rural Turkey to learn a trade in 1920s Berlin. The city's crowded streets, thriving arts scene, passionate politics and seedy cabarets provide the backdrop for a chance meeting with a woman, which will haunt him for the rest of his life. Emotionally powerful, intensely atmospheric and touchingly profound, Madonna in a Fur Coat is an unforgettable novel about new beginnings and the unfathomable nature of the human soul. 'Passionate but clear . . . Ali's success [is in ] his ability to describe the emergence of a feeling, seemingly straightforward from the outside but swinging back and forth between opposite extremes at its core, revealing the tensions that accompanies such rise and fall.' Atilla Özkirimli, writer and literary historian
Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, A Young Man and Life's Greatest Lesson
Mitch Albom · 1997
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The beloved book that has changed millions of lives with the story of an unforgettable friendship, the timeless wisdom of older generations, and healing lessons on loss and grief<br/><br/>“A wonderful book, a story of the heart told by a writer with soul.”—Los Angeles Times<br/><br/>“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”<br/><br/>Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it.<br/><br/>For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago.<br/><br/>Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded, and the world seemed colder. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you, receive wisdom for your busy life today the way you once did when you were younger?<br/><br/>Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying, Morrie visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final "class": lessons in how to live.<br/><br/>Tuesdays with Morrie is a magical chronicle of their time together, through which Mitch shares Morrie's lasting gift with the world.
Sula
Toni Morrison · 2004
Sula and Nel are born in the Bottom—a small town at the top of a hill. Sula is wild, and daring; she does what she wants, while Nel is well-mannered, a mamma’s girl with a questioning heart. Growing up they forge a bond stronger than anything, stronger even than the dark secret they have to bear. Strong enough, it seems, to last a lifetime—until, decades later, as the girls become women, Sula’s anarchy leads to a betrayal that may be beyond forgiveness.<br/><br/>One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years<br/><br/>Masterful, richly textured, bittersweet, and vital, Sula is a modern masterpiece about love and kinship, about living in an America birthed from slavery. Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison gives life to characters who struggle with what society tells them to be, and the love they long for and crave as Black women. Most of all, they ask: When can we let go? What must we hold back? And just how much can be shared in a friendship?
Agua viva
Clarice Lispector · 2014
Clarice Lispector tinha o hábito de dormir cedo, acordar de madrugada e ficar sentada na sua sala pensando, fumando e ouvindo a Rádio Relógio, acompanhada apenas de seu cachorro, Ulisses. Nesses momentos de solidão, nasceram muitas de suas obras, que, depois, ela escreveria com a máquina de escrever apoiada sobre as pernas. "Escrevo-te sentada junto de uma janela aberta no alto do meu ateliê", diz ela em determinado trecho do romance Água viva, em que a autora se confunde com a personagem, uma solitária pintora que se lança em infinitas reflexões sobre o tempo, a vida e a morte, os sonhos e visões, as flores, os estados da alma, a coragem e o medo e, principalmente, a arte da criação, do saber usar as palavras num jogo de sons e silêncios que se combinam, a especialidade da própria Clarice. Água viva, longo texto ficcional em forma de monólogo, foi lançado pela primeira vez em 1973, poucos anos antes da morte de Clarice que, nessa época, já se consagrara como um dos valores mais sólidos da nossa literatura, por seu estilo único, em que a grande preocupação era a busca permanente pela linguagem. E justamente por se tratar de um romance que leva a extremos a desestruturação da forma romanesca, Água viva é um desafio emocionante para quem lê ou relê Clarice Lispector. Traz uma linguagem que não se perde no tempo; ao contrário, é ricamente metafórica, em que coisas, ações e emoções do dia-a-dia se transformam em grandiosas digressões indagadoras sobre o sentido da existência e da vida. Seguindo a linha de características introspectivas de seus livros, Clarice cria, em Água viva, uma obra singular, verdadeiro relato íntimo que projeta em flashes, como num caleidoscópio, verdadeiros resumos de estados de espírito em tom de confidência, onde a subjetividade sobrepuja o factual e a narradora é responsável pela cadência do texto.
Letters to a Young Poet
Rainer Maria Rilke · 2002
In 1903, a student at a military academy sent some of his verses to a well-known Austrian poet, requesting an assessment of their value. The older artist, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), replied to the novice in this series of letters — an amazing archive of remarkable insights into the ideas behind Rilke's greatest poetry. The ten letters reproduced here were written during an important stage in Rilke's artistic development, and they contain many of the themes that later appeared in his best works. The poet himself afterwards stated that his letters contained part of his creative genius, making this volume essential reading for scholars, poetry lovers, and anyone with an interest in Rilke, German poetry, or the creative impulse.
lit fic
As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow
Zoulfa Katouh · 2022
A love letter to Syria and its people, As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow is a speculative novel set amid the Syrian Revolution, burning with the fires of hope, love, and possibility. Perfect for fans of The Book Thief and Salt to the Sea.<br/><br/>Salama Kassab was a pharmacy student when the cries for freedom broke out in Syria. She still had her parents and her big brother; she still had her home. She had a normal teenager’s life.<br/><br/>Now Salama volunteers at a hospital in Homs, helping the wounded who flood through the doors daily. Secretly, though, she is desperate to find a way out of her beloved country before her sister-in-law, Layla, gives birth. So desperate, that she has manifested a physical embodiment of her fear in the form of her imagined companion, Khawf, who haunts her every move in an effort to keep her safe.<br/><br/>But even with Khawf pressing her to leave, Salama is torn between her loyalty to her country and her conviction to survive. Salama must contend with bullets and bombs, military assaults, and her shifting sense of morality before she might finally breathe free. And when she crosses paths with the boy she was supposed to meet one fateful day, she starts to doubt her resolve in leaving home at all.<br/><br/>Soon, Salama must learn to see the events around her for what they truly are—not a war, but a revolution—and decide how she, too, will cry for Syria’s freedom.
Written On The Body
Jeanette Winterson · 1993
The most beguilingly seductive novel to date from the author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. Winterson chronicles the consuming affair between the narrator, who is given neither name nor gender, and the beloved, a complex and confused married woman. "At once a love story and a philosophical meditation."--New York Times Book Review.
queer lit
Winter Love
Suyin Han · 2022
<p><b>An unheralded queer classic set in wartime London--"Han Suyin's outstanding achievement . . . her finest novel." (Alison Hennegan)</b></p> <p>As a college student in London during the bitterly cold winter of 1944, Red falls in love with her married classmate Mara. Their affair unleashes a physical passion, jealousy, and self-doubt that sweep all her previous experiences aside and will leave her changed forever. </p> <p>Set against the rubble and austerity of wartime London--barrage balloons overhead, blackout curtains drawn, cafés eking out tins of powdered egg--Winter Love evokes the exhilaration and the peril of living and loving in a city under siege.</p> <p>First published in 1962, this novella was long overlooked in Han's prolific career. "Probably the best thing she has ever written" (<i>Daily Telegraph</i>), it is also Han Suyin's most unexpected, tender, and stirring work.</p>
Women: A Novella
Chloe Caldwell · 2024
One of Cosmopolitan UK's Best Erotic Novels of All Time<br/>"Brief, sharp, and utterly consuming. . . Like your first love, it lingers long after the final chapter." – Tegan Quin<br/>"A contemporary classic of queer women's writing." – Michelle Tea<br/>"Her prose has a reckless beauty that feels to me like magic.” – Cheryl Strayed<br/>"[A] gorgeously composed queer novel that’s about so much more than romantic love.” –Vogue<br/>The cult-classic novella that intimately explores one young writer’s whirlwind and whiplash affair as she falls deeply in love with a woman for the first time.<br/>Sometimes I wonder what it is I could tell you about her for my job here to be done. I am looking for a shortcut. . . .But that would be asking too much from you. It wasn’t you who loved her.<br/>A young writer moves from the country to the city and falls in love with another woman for the very first time. From the start, the relationship is doomed; Finn is nineteen years older, wears men’s clothes, has a cocky smirk of a smile . . . and a long-term girlfriend.<br/>With startling clarity and breathtaking tenderness, Chloé Caldwell writes the story of a love in reverse: of nights spent drunkenly hurling a phone against a brick wall; of early mornings hungover in bed, curled up together; of emails and poems exchanged at breakneck speed. In Women, Caldwell lays bare the fierce obsession of addictive love, and asks the question: what, if anything, can who we love teach us about who we are?<br/>In this beautiful, transcendent, bracingly sexy novella, Caldwell tells a lust-love story that will bring you to your knees. Capturing the feverish heartbreak of Sapphic romance, painting a stark picture of an identity in crisis, and illuminating the exploratory possibilities of queer life, Women brands the heart and sears the soul.
Last Night at the Telegraph Club
Malinda Lo · 2021
Winner of the National Book Award<br/>A New York Times Bestseller<br/><br/>"The queer romance we’ve been waiting for.”—Ms. Magazine<br/><br/>Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the feeling took root—that desire to look, to move closer, to touch. Whenever it started growing, it definitely bloomed the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. Suddenly everything seemed possible.<br/><br/>But America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.<br/><br/>(Cover image may vary.)
Sunburn
Chloe Michellq Howarth · 2023
<p><b>** Shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize 2024 **</b><br><b>** Shortlisted for the 2024 Book of the Year: Discover Award by the British Book Awards **<br>** Shortlisted for the 2023 Nero Book Award for Debut Fiction **<br>** Longlisted for the Diverse Book Awards 2024 **<br>** An <i>Evening Standard</i> 'One to Watch in 2023 **<br>** An <i>Independent</i> ‘Best Romantic Summer Reads' **<br>** A Book of the Month pick for <i>Diva</i>, <i>Irish Examiner</i>, <i>Novellic </i>& <i>Sainsbury’s Magazine</i> **<br>** A Most Anticipated pick for <i>PinkNews</i> & <i>Queer on the Street</i> **</b></p><br> <p>It's the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Despite her fierce friendships, she's always felt this way, and the conventional path of marriage and motherhood doesn't appeal to her at all. Not even with handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend.</p><br> <p>Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates to an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love.</p><br> <p>Fearful of rejection from her small and conservative community, Lucy begins living a double life, hiding the most honest parts of herself in stolen moments with Susannah.</p><br> <p>But with the end of school and the opportunity to leave Crossmore looming, Lucy must choose between two places, two people and two futures, each as terrifying as the other. Neither will be easy, but only one will offer her happiness.</p><br> <p><b><i>Sunburn</i> is an astute and tender portrayal of first love, adolescent anxiety and the realities of growing up in a small town where tradition holds people tightly in its grasp. An atmospheric sapphic love story and coming-of-age novel with the intensity of Megan Nolan's <i>Acts of Desperation</i>, the long hot summer of André Aciman's <i>Call Me By Your Name</i> and the female friendships of Anna Hope's <i>Expectation</i>.</b></p><br> <p>‘A tender and heartfelt coming-of-age tale’ – <b><i>Heat</i></b></p><br> <p>‘A compassionate take on the push and pull between what's expected and what is felt’ – <b><i>Herald</i></b></p><br> <p>‘A deeply moving, heartfelt love story’ – <b><i>Daily Mail</i></b></p><br> <p>‘Lucy tells her story in a true, compelling voice, with an eye for minutiae, quaint apercus, and confidences that make her account moving and convincing’ – <b><i>SAGA Magazine</i></b></p><br> <p>‘Tender and poignant... Ideal reading for the last month of summer’ – <b><i>Diva</i></b></p><br> <p>'Intense and all-consuming - like the first love it describes - <i>Sunburn</i> transported me to the heart of summer and the heady days of late adolescence. I won't soon forget Chloe Michelle Howarth's addictive, lushly written debut' - <b>Laura Sims</b></p><br> <p>'Capturing all the intensity of first love, blended with the claustrophobia of small-town life, this debut, inspired by real experience, is tender and raw' - <b><i>The Bookseller</i></b></p><br> <p>'A beautiful coming of age love novel written with an insightful poetical prose, rich with religious allegory and texture which underscores the transformative, spiritual power of first love explored' - <b><i>Scene Magazine</i></b></p>
