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Laura’s 2022 Year in Books
Take a look at Laura’s Year in Books. The long, the short—it’s all here.
Laura McNeal’s Followers (268)
1,123 books
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57 friends
1,416 books
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18 friends
2,300 books
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162 friends
1,203 books
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123 friends
1,171 books
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565 friends
3,918 books
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197 friends
92 books
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2 friends
472 books
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96 friends
More friends…
Laura McNeal
Goodreads Author
Born
The United States
Website
Twitter
Genre
Influences
Penelope Fitzgerald, Jane Gardam, Hilary Mantel, William Trevor, Georg
...more
Member Since
October 2010
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The Practice House
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published
2017
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5 editions
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Crooked
by
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published
1999
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12 editions
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Dark Water
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published
2010
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13 editions
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Zipped
by
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published
2003
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10 editions
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The Incident on the Bridge
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published
2016
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8 editions
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Crushed
by
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published
2006
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9 editions
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The Decoding of Lana Morris
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published
2007
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8 editions
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The Death of Judy Huscher
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published
2013
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You Can't Leave Me Now: Three Stories of True Crime
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published
2014
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The Last Meeting of the Dove Club: A Pioneer Family's Tragedy
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published
2013
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Ambassadors
A long time ago, when I was 21, Tobias Wolff asked me a question. "Do you feel like you have to be an ambassador for your faith in your writing?"
This was at Syracuse University, and we were in his office in the Hall of Languages, an ornate stone castle of a building that stood at the top of a hill I climbed every day like a pilgrim. Toby's office, on the fifth floor, was fittingly grand, full of Read more of this blog post »
This was at Syracuse University, and we were in his office in the Hall of Languages, an ornate stone castle of a building that stood at the top of a hill I climbed every day like a pilgrim. Toby's office, on the fifth floor, was fittingly grand, full of Read more of this blog post »
Laura’s Recent Updates
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I'm so glad! Fortunately for me, I have not yet reached November of 1889 so I don't have to compete directly with Richard Howard . . . not yet, anyway
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Laura McNeal
rated a book it was amazing
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| I bought this book because I came across a quotation from “November, 1889,” the poem in which Howard becomes Robert Browning. I know I should say, “speaks as if he is Robert Browning” or “delivers a monologue in the voice of Robert Browning” but I st ...more | |
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Laura McNeal
rated a book really liked it
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| Norma is a terrible friend. And yet Susan cannot stop missing her, competing with her, confiding in her, or forgiving her. That was the most compelling thing about the book for me—the comic treatment of a friendship that starts before marriage and ca ...more | |
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Laura McNeal
rated a book it was ok
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The Limitations of Style There are two writers like this, and the other one is Lorrie Moore. At a sentence level, the description is so charming that you want to spend every minute with her for the rest of your life. I have always loved Laurie Colwin ...more |
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Laura McNeal
is currently reading
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Laura McNeal
wants to read
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Laura McNeal
made a comment on
her review
of
The Barretts Of Jamaica: The Family Of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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True. After I wrote this review, I was able, while at the Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor, to read the letters between siblings and I found them
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Laura McNeal
rated a book it was ok
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| I adore and revere A.S. Byatt but I simply cannot make myself wade further through the clogged, ornate, individually brilliant sentences that ultimately form paragraphs that go on far FAR too long about tangentially relevant artistic ideas. It’s like ...more | |
"The White Tiger’s story is told through the most compelling letters I’ve read in a novel. The quote that stuck with me was, “The story of a poor man's life is written on his body, in a sharp pen.” "
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“Amiel was looking at me with the kind of interest that made my mouth dry up. I was Braille and his eyes were fingers.”
― Dark Water
― Dark Water
“Tu' eres de dos mundos."
He was wrong, of course. You can only belong to one world at a time.”
― Dark Water
He was wrong, of course. You can only belong to one world at a time.”
― Dark Water
“Inside the house, near the hearth, Amiel had built a sort of fire pit with rocks. It was a safer place to cook than most campsites, really, because there was concrete all around, and I longed to be there when he had the fire going, when we could be cowgirl and cowboy and pretend we weren't a few miles from two million people.”
― Dark Water
― Dark Water
Polls
Topics Mentioning This Author
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Young Adult Book ...: Quarterly Challenge (Summer 2011) | 113 | 669 | Aug 31, 2011 04:02PM | |
| Young Adult Book ...: A-Z Challenge | 98 | 626 | Jun 17, 2012 04:06AM | |
| YA Reads for Teac...: September 2012 - Book Giveaway - Nerd Girls: A Catastrophe of Nerdish Proportions by Alan Lawrence Sitomer | 111 | 147 | Nov 20, 2012 07:21PM | |
| The Seasonal Read...: Fall Challenge 2012: Reading Plans | 58 | 339 | Nov 23, 2012 08:20PM | |
The Seasonal Read...:
Fall Challenge 2012: Completed Tasks - DO NOT DELETE ANY POSTS IN THIS TOPIC
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2321 | 731 | Dec 28, 2012 03:29PM | |
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The Seasonal Read...:
Summer Challenge 2013: Completed Tasks (DO NOT DELETE POSTS)
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2515 | 744 | Aug 31, 2013 09:04PM | |
| Crazy Challenge C...: Zodiac challenge | 704 | 251 | Nov 04, 2013 05:52PM |
“A man must love a thing very much if he practices it without any hope of fame or money, but even practice it without any hope of doing it well. Such a man must love the toils of the work more than any other man can love the rewards of it.”
― Robert Browning
― Robert Browning
“The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.”
― Gooseberries and Other Stories
― Gooseberries and Other Stories
“It is a curious thing, do you know, Cranly said dispassionately, how your mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say you disbelieve.”
― A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
― A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
“Text of bliss: the text that imposes a state of loss, the text that discomforts (perhaps to the point of a certain boredom), unsettles the reader's historical, cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, values, memories, brings to a crisis his relation with language.”
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“I probably reread novels more often than I read new ones. The novel form is made for rereading. Novels are by their nature too long, too baggy, too full of things – you can't hold them completely in your mind. This isn't a flaw – it's part of the novel's richness: its length, multiplicity of aspects, and shapelessness resemble the length and shapelessness of life itself. By the time you reach the end of the novel you will have forgotten the beginning and much of what happens in between: not the main outlines but the fine work, the detail and the music of the sentences – the particular words, through which the novel has its life. You think you know a novel so well that there must be nothing left in it to discover but the last time I reread Emma I found a little shepherd boy, brought into the parlour to sing for Harriet when she's staying with the Martin family. I'm sure he was never in the book before.”
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¡ POETRY !
— 22320 members
— last activity Mar 24, 2023 02:45PM
No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read ...more
Parents Reading Book Club
— 222 members
— last activity Oct 26, 2020 07:57AM
A book club for parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles to come together and share what books they and their children have enjoyed. Will aim to have t ...more
THE Group for Authors!
— 12317 members
— last activity 14 hours, 0 min ago
This is a group for authors to discuss their craft, as well as publishing and book marketing.
