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September 04
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Anna
gave
   
to:
How to (Un)cage a Girl
by Francesca Lia Block
bookshelves:
galleys
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my rating:
   
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read in September, 2008
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September 03
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Anna
gave
   
to:
Psyche in a Dress (Hardcover)
by Francesca Lia Block
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my rating:
   
Added to my books!
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read in September, 2008
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September 01
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Anna
gave
   
to:
Home: A Novel (Hardcover)
by Marilynne Robinson
bookshelves:
galleys,
reviewed-for-watermark
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my rating:
   
Added to my books!
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read in September, 2008
Anna said:
"“Home. What kinder place could there be on earth, and why did it seem to them all like exile?”
I read Marilynne Robinson’s 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner, “Gilead,” in the backseat of the family station wagon on the drive home from Wisconsin t...more
“Home. What kinder place could there be on earth, and why did it seem to them all like exile?”
I read Marilynne Robinson’s 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner, “Gilead,” in the backseat of the family station wagon on the drive home from Wisconsin this January, after seeing my grandmother for the last time. I think this was the perfect way to read it: in one breathless, emotional rush, bathed in sunlight and distance and faith. “Home” can’t be read that way. Where “Gilead” was epic, “Home” is intimate; where “Gilead” awoke toward the future, “Home” tosses and turns restlessly in the past; where “Gilead” was hope, “Home” is despair.
“Home” takes place at the same time as “Gilead,” in the same tiny eponymous Iowa town, in the house of retired Reverend Robert Boughton, whose youngest daughter, Glory, has returned from a failed marriage to care for her frail father. Their routine is irrevocably broken by the unexplained arrival of Boughton’s black-sheep son, Jack, after an absence of twenty years. Jack is a drunk and a thief and a disappointment, and the focus of his father’s relationship with God. Boughton is by turns bitter and forgiving, cruel and heartbreakingly tender, while Glory finds ways to help, or think she helps, her brother. Through it all, Jack remains helplessly detached, unable to connect with his family despite his longing for exactly that.
This spare, subtle narrative recalls Henry James in the way only minute shifts in attitude or speech that provide any notion of the characters’ internal lives; but those crucial details are what create the movement—halting, futile as it may be—of the novel. “Home” is slow but steady, and almost impossibly sad. The Boughtons have no more means to clear away their prior lives than they do of ridding the house of its antiquated furniture and generations of useless knickknacks. The familiar, however wounding, is all they have....less
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August 26
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Anna
marked as to-read:
The Spy's Bedside Book (Paperback)
by Graham Greene, Hugh Greene
bookshelves:
galleys,
to-read
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my rating:
   
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Anna
marked as to-read:
Cycler (Hardcover)
by Lauren Mclaughlin
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
   
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September 04
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Anna
installed the Goodreads Facebook Application
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August 22
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Anna
marked as to-read:
Poe's Children: The New Horror: An Anthology (Hardcover)
by Peter Straub
bookshelves:
galleys,
to-read
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my rating:
   
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Anna
marked as to-read:
The Possession of Mr. Cave: A Novel (Hardcover)
by Matt Haig
bookshelves:
galleys,
to-read
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my rating:
   
Added to my books!
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Anna
marked as to-read:
Miles from Nowhere (Hardcover)
by Nami Mun
bookshelves:
galleys,
to-read
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my rating:
   
Added to my books!
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Anna
marked as to-read:
Pretty Monsters: Stories (Hardcover)
by Kelly Link, Shaun Tan
bookshelves:
galleys,
to-read
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my rating:
   
Added to my books!
add my review
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