英文原版
Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom Douban
★ 8.0 (9 ratings) author: Katherine Eban publishing house: Ecco 2019 - 5
Many have hailed the widespread use of generic drugs as one of the most important public-health developments of the twenty-first century. Today, almost 90 percent of our pharmaceutical market is comprised of generics, the majority of which are manufactured overseas. We have been reassured by our doctors, our pharmacists and our regulators that generic drugs are identical to their brand-name counterparts, just less expensive. But is this really true?
Katherine Eban’s Bottle of Lies exposes the deceit behind generic-drug manufacturing—and the attendant risks for global health. Drawing on exclusive accounts from whistleblowers and regulators, as well as thousands of pages of confidential FDA documents, Eban reveals an industry where fraud is rampant, companies routinely falsify data, and executives circumvent almost every principle of safe manufacturing to minimize cost and maximize profit, confident in their ability to fool inspectors. Meanwhile, patients unwittingly consume medicine with unpredictable and dangerous effects.
The story of generic drugs is truly global. It connects middle America to China, India, sub-Saharan Africa and Brazil, and represents the ultimate litmus test of globalization: what are the risks of moving drug manufacturing offshore, and are they worth the savings?
A decade-long investigation with international sweep, high-stakes brinkmanship and big money at its core, Bottle of Lies reveals how the world’s greatest public-health innovation has become one of its most astonishing swindles.
Jan. 27, 2022 read
一个这么好的题材,被作者写得稀烂。故事非常散乱且冗长。有种所有我调查到的内容都要填进去的杂乱感。人物脸谱化,凡正面角色一定要讲到成长经历,父亲职业的影响,反面角色一定是生活奢迷,草菅人命,毫无道德可言。350字装不下我的吐槽。可能需要写一篇长评。。。。。。
英文原版 wildwestbookclub audiobook 医学 美国
Contempt Douban Goodreads
author: 阿尔贝托·莫拉维亚 translator: Angus Davidson publishing house: NYRB Classics 2004 - 7
Contempt is a brilliant and unsettling work by one of the revolutionary masters of modern European literature. All the qualities for which Alberto Moravia is justly famous—his cool clarity of expression, his exacting attention to psychological complexity and social pretension, his still-striking openness about sex—are evident in this story of a failing marriage. Contempt (which was to inspire Jean-Luc Godard's no-less-celebrated film) is an unflinching examination of desperation and self-deception in the emotional vacuum of modern consumer society.
Jan. 20, 2022 read
这是一个剧透就没办法写短评的作品。。。作者用第一人称的角度去引导读者,再通过奥德赛的故事暗示,第一人称的“我”所看到的并不是全部的真相。这是一个绝妙的idea,之前从来没有看过类似的作品。我前半部份完全被“我”带跑偏。。如何让读者意识到,“我”的视角并不是全部,私认为作者的暗示有点过于明显,再含蓄一点更完美。结局有点扯。
2022 两性关系 英文原版
Say Nothing Douban Goodreads Skybridge
author: Patrick Radden Keefe publishing house: Doubleday 2019 - 2 other title: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland
From award-winning New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe, a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions
In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville’s children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress–with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.
Patrick Radden Keefe’s mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders. From radical and impetuous I.R.A. terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious I.R.A. mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his I.R.A. past–Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish.
Dec. 28, 2021 read
用小人物的故事串起的北爱独立运动波澜壮阔的历史!再次印证了真实历史比故事精彩!更难能可贵的是作者并没有站在北爱或者British的立场去讲述,而是极为克制地以客观的角度描述并留给读者自己去判断。作者在后记里写:书中的所有对话与故事细节没有一处是想象或虚构的。读完掩卷叹息,时代一粒灰落在个人头上就是一座山
英文原版 政治 IRA 爱尔兰 2021
Childhood's End Douban
★ 8.0 (7 ratings) author: 亚瑟·克拉克 publishing house: Del Rey 1987 - 5
Without warning, giant silver ships from deep space appear in the skies above every major city on Earth. Manned by the Overlords, in fifty years, they eliminate ignorance, disease, and poverty. Then this golden age ends--and then the age of Mankind begins....
Dec. 20, 2021 read
补读书小组今年选书,并没能体会到评论所说的宏大主题以及人文关怀。。也不觉得结局悲伤,地球的毁灭不是已经被热力学第二定律注定了吗?
科幻 英文原版 2021 wildwest
The Gene Douban
★ 8.3 (6 ratings) author: Siddhartha Mukherjee publishing house: Scribner 2016 - 5
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of The Emperor of All Maladies—a magnificent history of the gene and a response to the defining question of the future: What becomes of being human when we learn to “read” and “write” our own genetic information?
The extraordinary Siddhartha Mukherjee has a written a biography of the gene as deft, brilliant, and illuminating as his extraordinarily successful biography of cancer. Weaving science, social history, and personal narrative to tell us the story of one of the most important conceptual breakthroughs of modern times, Mukherjee animates the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices.
Throughout the narrative, the story of Mukherjee’s own family—with its tragic and bewildering history of mental illness—cuts like a bright, red line, reminding us of the many questions that hang over our ability to translate the science of genetics from the laboratory to the real world. In superb prose and with an instinct for the dramatic scene, he describes the centuries of research and experimentation—from Aristotle and Pythagoras to Mendel and Darwin, from Boveri and Morgan to Crick, Watson and Franklin, all the way through the revolutionary twenty-first century innovators who mapped the human genome.
As The New Yorker said of The Emperor of All Maladies, “It’s hard to think of many books for a general audience that have rendered any area of modern science and technology with such intelligence, accessibility, and compassion…An extraordinary achievement.” Riveting, revelatory, and magisterial history of a scientific idea coming to life, and an essential preparation for the moral complexity introduced by our ability to create or “write” the human genome, The Gene is a must-read for everyone concerned about the definition and future of humanity. This is the most crucial science of our time, intimately explained by a master.
Dec. 12, 2021 read
啃了一个月终于啃完了。很宏大的一个主题,作者深入浅出的讨论了基因的方方面面,很多很有想象力的比喻来帮助读者理解,对于基因工程带来的对于社会伦理道德的挑战又很深入的讨论。作为一本科普读物非常合格。
英文原版 科普 2021 医学
Man's Search for Meaning
Trotzdem ja zum Leben sagen: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager
★ 8.7 (25 ratings) author: Viktor E. Frankl translator: Isle Lasch publishing house: Beacon Press 2006 - 6
Book Description
Frankl's timeless memoir and meditation on finding meaning in the midst of suffering With a new Foreword by Harold S. Kushner and a new Biographical Afterword by William J. Winslade Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl's memoir has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl's theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos ("meaning")-holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful. At the time of Frankl's death in 1997, Man's Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in twenty-four languages. A 1991 reader survey for the Library of Congress that asked readers to name a "book that made a difference in your life" found Man's Search for Meaning among the ten most influential books in America. Beacon Press, the original English-language publisher of Man's Search for Meaning, is issuing this new paperback edition with a new Foreword, biographical Afterword, jacket, price, and classroom materials to reach new generations of readers.
Book Dimension
length: (cm)17.6                 width:(cm)10.6
Dec. 2, 2021 read
读书小组之前选书补课中,很早就听了一半,今天草草听完,并没有很特别的印象。非虚构听有声书对我来说还是有点困难,太容易走神了!本书时长4时44分,2021年听书116时02分。
psychology 英文原版 westwildbookclub audiobook
The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read Douban
author: Philippa Perry publishing house: Penguin Life 2019 - 3
'Hugely warm, wise, hopeful and encouraging' Alain de Botton
Every parent wants their child to be happy and every parent wants to avoid screwing them up. But how do you achieve that?
In this absorbing, clever and funny book, renowned psychotherapist Philippa Perry tells us what really matters and what behaviour it is important to avoid - the vital dos and don'ts of parenting.
Instead of mapping out the 'perfect' plan, Perry offers a big-picture look at the elements that lead to good parent-child relationships. This refreshing, judgement-free book will help you to:
· Understand how your own upbringing may affect your parenting
· Accept that you will make mistakes and learn what you can do about them
· Break negative cycles and patterns
· Handle your own and your child's feelings
· Understand what different behaviours communicate
Full of sage and sane advice, this is the book that every parent will want to read and every child will wish their parents had.
Dec. 2, 2021 read
#有声书 我一个不生孩子的人也不明白自己为什么选了这本书来看,或许是被名字所吸引,或许想要和父母和解。总的来说full of clinche nothing new。核心思想是,children do not do what we say; children do what we do. 唯一一点到我的是亲密关系中validate other's feeling 很重要。听完甚至觉得自己父母其实还不错,茫茫人海中普通父母的一员。全书时长8 时22 分。2021年听书时长总计103时19分
教育 英文原版 心理学 育儿 Audiobook
The Order of Time Douban
★ 7.1 (7 ratings) author: Carlo Rovelli publishing house: Allen Lane 2018 - 4
The bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics takes us on an enchanting, consoling journey to discover the meaning of time
'We are time. We are this space, this clearing opened by the traces of memory inside the connections between our neurons. We are memory. We are nostalgia. We are longing for a future that will not come.'
Time is a mystery that does not cease to puzzle us. Philosophers, artists and poets have long explored its meaning while scientists have found that its structure is different from the simple intuition we have of it. From Boltzmann to quantum theory, from Einstein to loop quantum gravity, our understanding of time has been undergoing radical transformations. Time flows at a different speed in different places, the past and the future differ far less than we might think, and the very notion of the present evaporates in the vast universe.
With his extraordinary charm and sense of wonder, bringing together science, philosophy and art, Carlo Rovelli unravels this mystery. Enlightening and consoling, The Order of Time shows that to understand ourselves we need to reflect on time -- and to understand time we need to reflect on ourselves.
Nov. 22, 2021 read
读书小组11月选书,可能是今年读的最难的一本了,看了英文版中文版听了英文有声书,去youtube看了狭义广义相对论以及热力学第二定律,还是只明白了50-60%,仿佛被打开了新视界又仿佛仍被困在自己的小视界。。应该会是一直反复读下去的书吧。
时空 英文原版 audiobook 物理 westwildbookclub
Project Hail Mary
★ 9.2 (59 ratings) author: Jack Sharp publishing house: Penguin Random House 2021 - 5
A lone astronaut must save the earth from disaster in this incredible new science-based thriller from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Martian.
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission--and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.
Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.
All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, he realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Alone on this tiny ship that's been cobbled together by every government and space agency on the planet and hurled into the depths of space, it's up to him to conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.
And thanks to an unexpected ally, he just might have a chance.
Part scientific mystery, part dazzling interstellar journey, Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian--while taking us to places it never dreamed of going.
Nov. 1, 2021 read
有声书讲的也太好了!属于硬科幻类的书,两位nerd心心相惜真是好可爱!最后的大结局也出人意料,非常硬核我很喜欢!
有声书 audio 英文原版 科幻
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster Douban
★ 7.3 (6 ratings) author: 比尔·盖茨 publishing house: Random House 2021 - 2
In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical--and accessible--plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe.
Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide toward certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal.
He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions--suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise.
As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.
Oct. 1, 2021 read
#audiobook 读书小组10月份选书。比尔盖茨关于全球变暖以及如何减少碳排放而著。首先因为我个人不认为解决碳排放是个迫在眉睫的问题,而无法感受这本书的好以及相应的解决方案,我等p民毫无共情。再有感觉盖茨真的是没受过写论文的苦,一点不知道字数限制的痛苦,经常长篇大论的废话,好几页纸只为一个浅显易懂的道理。再加上他理科生的逻辑思维方式,听完全本居然觉得减碳到零排放是毫无希望。还有目标受众非常模糊,一时是给青少年上课的姿态,一时又是和各种政要讨论policy的高姿态。唯一稍觉有趣的是写到一些普通物理化学的知识点,比如如何炼钢和制造水泥。有声书来说讲述的非常好,生动活泼,以一己之力让我给有声书打了3🌟。本书时长7时11分。2021年度听书78时29分
英文原版 环境 气候 audiobook westwildbookclub
Crying in H Mart Douban Goodreads Skybridge
Crying in H Mart
★ 7.9 (62 ratings) author: Michelle Zauner publishing house: Alfred A. Knopf 2021 - 4
From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame, and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker essay that shares the title of this book, an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity.
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.
The Dutch House Douban Goodreads
author: Ann Patchett publishing house: Harper 2019 - 9
At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.
The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakeable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.
Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.
June 25, 2021 read
#audiobook# The Dutch house类似于老宅子里的个人成长的故事,但是剧中姐弟很快就失去了老宅,而且剧中的我是个男生,作者又是女生,感觉有点不伦不类。没有高潮平平淡淡地就结束了。本书有Tom Hanks讲述 ,他的美国口音太重了,所有单词在他嘴里含糊在一起,听着特别费劲!本书时长9小时53分,2021年度听书71小时18分.
美国文学 英文原版 听书 audiobook
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry Douban Goodreads Skybridge
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
author: Rachel Joyce publishing house: Random House Trade Paperbacks 2013 - 3
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST
Meet Harold Fry, recently retired. He lives in a small English village with his wife, Maureen, who seems irritated by almost everything he does, even down to how he butters his toast. Little differentiates one day from the next. Then one morning the mail arrives, and within the stack of quotidian minutiae is a letter addressed to Harold in a shaky scrawl from a woman he hasn’t seen or heard from in twenty years. Queenie Hennessy is in hospice and is writing to say goodbye.

Harold pens a quick reply and, leaving Maureen to her chores, heads to the corner mailbox. But then, as happens in the very best works of fiction, Harold has a chance encounter, one that convinces him that he absolutely must deliver his message to Queenie in person. And thus begins the unlikely pilgrimage at the heart of Rachel Joyce’s remarkable debut. Harold Fry is determined to walk six hundred miles from Kingsbridge to the hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed because, he believes, as long as he walks, Queenie Hennessey will live.

Still in his yachting shoes and light coat, Harold embarks on his urgent quest across the countryside. Along the way he meets one fascinating character after another, each of whom unlocks his long-dormant spirit and sense of promise. Memories of his first dance with Maureen, his wedding day, his joy in fatherhood, come rushing back to him—allowing him to also reconcile the losses and the regrets. As for Maureen, she finds herself missing Harold for the first time in years.

And then there is the unfinished business with Queenie Hennessy.

A novel of unsentimental charm, humor, and profound insight into the thoughts and feelings we all bury deep within our hearts, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry introduces Rachel Joyce as a wise—and utterly irresistible—storyteller.
Advance praise for The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“When it seems almost too late, Harold Fry opens his battered heart and lets the world rush in. This funny, poignant story about an ordinary man on an extraordinary journey moved and inspired me.”—Nancy Horan, author of Loving Frank

“There’s tremendous heart in this debut novel by Rachel Joyce, as she probes questions that are as simple as they are profound: Can we begin to live again, and live truly, as ourselves, even in middle age, when all seems ruined? Can we believe in hope when hope seems to have abandoned us? I found myself laughing through tears, rooting for Harold at every step of his journey. I’m still rooting for him.”—Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife

“Marvelous! I held my breath at his every blister and cramp, and felt as if by turning the pages, I might help his impossible quest succeed.”—Helen Simonson, author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand

“Harold’s journey is ordinary and extraordinary; it is a journey through the self, through modern society, through time and landscape. It is a funny book, a wise book, a charming book—but never cloying. It’s a book with a savage twist—and yet never seems manipulative. Perhaps because Harold himself is just wonderful. . . . I’m telling you now: I love this book.”—Erica Wagner, The Times (UK)

“The odyssey of a simple man . . . original, subtle and touching.”—Claire Tomalin, author of Charles Dickens: A Life
May 31, 2021 read
#audiobook 一个人的朝圣之旅,讲述Harold Fry的赎罪之旅。之前看过中文版,翻译的非常好,很喜欢才听了有声书。讲的很好,但是故事内容却让我失去兴趣,为Quene不值,一片痴心错付了别人。时长9小时57分。2021年听书70时25分。
英文原版 原版 audiobook 英文 小说
The Midnight Library Douban Skybridge
★ 6.3 (17 ratings) author: Matt Haig publishing house: Viking 2020 - 10 other title: The Midnight Library A Novel
"Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?"
A dazzling novel about all the choices that go into a life well lived, from the internationally bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive and How To Stop Time.
Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?
In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting new novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.
May 13, 2021 read
#audiobook Goodreads去年评分最高的小说,However, I hate everything about this book. 恶心的鸡汤文,自恋狂,让人生气的人生观,看不起这个看不起那个,每个章节都想让人骂娘!我自虐般的听完了,就是想让自己有资格对这本书说:you are full of shit! 全长8小时50分,2021年累计听书60时28分。
Fiction 英文原版 听书 English
The Vanishing Half (Audiobook) Douban
author: Brit Bennett / Shayna Small (Narrator) publishing house: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group 2020 - 6
Duration: 11:34:06
AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A GOOD MORNING AMERICA Book Club Pick!
"Bennett's tone and style recalls James Baldwin and Jacqueline Woodson, but it's especially reminiscent of Toni Morrison's 1970 debut novel, The Bluest Eye." —Kiley Reid, Wall Street Journal
"A story of absolute, universal timelessness ...For any era, it's an accomplished, affecting novel. For this moment, it's piercing, subtly wending its way toward questions about who we are and who we want to be...." – Entertainment Weekly
From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white.
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.
As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.
April 15, 2021 read
#audiobook The Vanishing Half去年goodreds评分最高的历史小说,讲述一对混血双胞胎女孩自年少离家自我认同的故事。故事设定很吸引人但是中段之后很拖沓,很多有意思的点最后都无疾而终,或许都是姐妹两寻找自我的注脚。讲述者在白人黑人男人女人的口音音调之间自由切换,听书的角度来说很过瘾! 时长11时34分,2021年度听书41时45分
身份认同 英文原版 transgendar audiobook 寻找自我
Klara and the Sun Douban Goodreads Goodreads Skybridge
Klara and the Sun
★ 7.7 (27 ratings) author: Kazuo Ishiguro publishing house: Knopf 2021 - 3 other title: Klara and the Sun A novel
Klara and the Sun, the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her.
Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?
April 5, 2021 read
#audiobook 诺贝尔奖得主石黑一雄的新作,故事情节颇为老套,基本是人工智能牺牲自己拯救人类的套路,但是石黑一雄站在人工智能的角度对人类观察的那种旁观让人着迷。时长10时16分。2021年度听书30时11分
英文原版 石黑一雄 audiobook westwildbookclub 小说
Eat, Pray, Love Douban
★ 7.8 (13 ratings) author: [美国] Elizabeth Gilbert publishing house: Penguin Books 2008 - 6
The only thing wrong with this readable, funny memoir of a magazine writer's yearlong travels across the world in search of pleasure and balance is that it seems so much like a Jennifer Aniston movie. Like Jen, Liz is a plucky blond American woman in her thirties with no children and no major money worries. As the book opens, she is going through a really bad divorce and subsequent stormy rebound love affair. Awash in tears in the middle of the night on the floor of the bathroom, she begins to pray for guidance, “you know —— like, to God.” God answers. He tells her to go back to bed. I started seeing the Star headlines: “Jen's New Faith!” “What Really Happened at the Ashram!” “Jen's Brazilian Sugar Daddy —— Exclusive Photos!” Please understand that Gilbert, whose earlier nonfiction book, The Last American Man, portrayed a contemporary frontiersman, is serious about her quest. But because she never leaves her self-deprecating humor at home, her journey out of depression and toward belief lacks a certain gravitas. The book is composed of 108 short chapters (based on the beads in a traditional Indian japa mala prayer necklace) that often come across as scenes in a movie. And however sad she feels or however deeply she experiences something, she can't seem to avoid dressing up her feelings in prose that can get too cute and too trite. On the other hand, she convinced me that she acquired more wisdom than most young American seekers —— and did it without peyote buttons or other classic hippie medicines. When Gilbert determines that she requires a year of healing, her first stop is Italy, because she feels she needs to immerse herself in a language and culture that worships pleasure and beauty. This sets the stage for a “Jen's Romp in Rome,” where she studies Italian and, with newfound friends, searches for the best pizza in the world......
March 3, 2021 read
2月份才听完本年度第一本书 看来真是懈怠了!这本小资圣经开始的时候很排斥觉得不过是个中产阶级的妇女无病呻吟的一本书,但是最终听完不得不佩服她果决告别过去寻找自我的勇气和信念!推荐指数四星。2021年听书时长12时49分。#audiobook
英文原版 旅行 女性 自我 audiobook
The Handmaid's Tale Douban
★ 8.1 (34 ratings) author: Margaret Atwood publishing house: Anchor 1998 - 3
From the bestselling author of Alias Grace and the MaddAddam trilogy, here is the #1 New York Times bestseller and seminal work of speculative fiction from the Booker Prize-winning author.
Now a Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss, Samira Wiley, and Joseph Fiennes. Includes a new introduction by Margaret Atwood.
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable.
Offred can remember the days before, when she lived and made love with her husband Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now….
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and literary tour de force.
The Broken Ladder Douban
author: Keith Payne publishing house: Viking 2017 - 5
A timely examination by a leading scientist of the physical, psychological, and moral effects of inequality.
The levels of inequality in the world today are on a scale that have not been seen in our lifetimes, yet the disparity between rich and poor has ramifications that extend far beyond mere financial means. In The Broken Ladder psychologist Keith Payne examines how inequality divides us not just economically; it also has profound consequences for how we think, how we respond to stress, how our immune systems function, and even how we view moral concepts such as justice and fairness.
Research in psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics has not only revealed important new insights into how inequality changes people in predictable ways but also provided a corrective to the flawed view of poverty as being the result of individual character failings. Among modern developed societies, inequality is not primarily a matter of the actual amount of money people have. It is, rather, people's sense of where they stand in relation to others. Feeling poor matters—not just being poor. Regardless of their average incomes, countries or states with greater levels of income inequality have much higher rates of all the social maladies we associate with poverty, including lower than average life expectancies, serious health problems, mental illness, and crime.
The Broken Ladder explores such issues as why women in poor societies often have more children, and why they have them at a younger age; why there is little trust among the working class in the prudence of investing for the future; why people's perception of their social status affects their political beliefs and leads to greater political divisions; how poverty raises stress levels as effectively as actual physical threats; how inequality in the workplace affects performance; and why unequal societies tend to become more religious. Understanding how inequality shapes our world can help us better understand what drives ideological divides, why high inequality makes the middle class feel left behind, and how to disconnect from the endless treadmill of social comparison.
The Silent Patient Douban Goodreads Goodreads Skybridge
Alex Michaelides
★ 7.3 (22 ratings) author: Alex Michaelides publishing house: Celadon Books 2019 - 2
Promising to be the debut novel of the season The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive…
Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.
Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.
Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....
Dec. 10, 2020 read
用词很简单情节很抓人的小说,但是逻辑并没有很合理,和大部分同类小说一样,算是套了个心理学外壳,但是并没有很心理学。比较适合有声书,一天就听完了 时长8时43分
心理 英文原版 悬疑 audiobook