#_bookshelf2019_

[davidamacylee]

🌟🌟🌟 ⭐ ⭐(3/5) . The Earth’s been destroyed, but Don’t Panic. I can’t tell if this innovative satire with a chaotic neutral alignment is trying to be really really fantastic science fiction or really really terrible science fiction, but either way, it succeeds. I recommend the version read by Stephen Fry-but then, I’d prefer to have just about anything read to me by Stephen Fry. . 🎧listened to in #audiobook format with the #Libby app🎧 . #DouglasAdams #sciencefiction #scifi #satire #fiction #dontpanic #thehitchhikersguidetothegalaxy #bookstagram #booksireadin2019 #readinglist2019 #_bookshelf2019_ #bookrecommendation (at Portland, Oregon) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0W8fPtJ_1V/?igshid=1has4dyyfwyyi

[davidamacylee]

🌟🌟🌟🌟⭐(4/5) . Six lives, connected by an unseen thread, cross the world like clouds cross the sky. Each story interrupted by the following story halfway through, and returned to in reverse order like Russian dolls nested within one another. This book is one of my very favorites to read, so while I did enjoy listening to this production which used six different fantastic voice actors to tell the story, I give it four out of five stars and recommend reading the book itself-I think that medium lends itself to the epic pace of the story a little better. (On a somewhat related note, I wanted to give this audiobook a 0/5 star rating for using the artwork from the film, which somehow manages to take an all-star cast and a truly original story and turn it into one of the worst film adaptations I’ve ever seen.) . 🎧listened to in #audiobook format with the #Libby app🎧 . #DavidMitchell #sciencefiction #scifi #historicalfiction #fiction #reincarnation #music #mystery #philosophy #cloudatlas #bookstagram #booksireadin2019 #readinglist2019 #_bookshelf2019_ #bookrecommendation https://www.instagram.com/p/B2KTvIxJlQJ/?igshid=nwzl0k5bw8ww

[davidamacylee]

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟(5/5) . A world wrapped in eternal winter. A race of humans who are neither male nor female but which can change at a moments’ notice. Trust and betrayal, pride and politics, the turning of a great wheel—The Left Hand of Darkness reads like a deepspace folk tale, an origin story whispered by mystics of the time when Winter overcame its own bitterness and learned to reach beyond the stars. I have never read anything quite like it. . I find myself turning the last page of this book fifty years after its initial publication, yet I feel refreshed. The world of Science Fiction has become cluttered with cliche and tangled in trope since 1969, but The Left Hand of Darkness is clearly among the progenitors of the genre. It is something like the experience of having seen a picture of a famous painting or landmark many times, and finally finding yourself in the presence of the real thing. Suddenly that which you had enjoyed and become familiar with in representation is more tangible, wrapped in the mystique of its own influence while existing close enough to touch. Where in other works of science fiction I have found the laborious construction of a world and an alien race a chore to familiarize myself with, Ursula K. LeGuin has created an immersive world too wide to take in, such that the experience of reading The Left Hand of Darkness is like coming upon a new culture, experiencing the shock of unfamiliarity, of otherness, and the slow assimilation into acceptance of the strangeness of a new place. Not your typical political space-thriller, this book presents a vision terrifying, grotesque, exhilarating, and deeply sensitive to the sense of what it is to be alive, to come to fear and travel through it. Through her characters, Ursula brings us to the brink of death and back from it with quite the tale to tell. And throughout, when her characters crack and show their inner thoughts and feelings, her deep insight and compassion to life shines through. . #TheLeftHandOfDarkness #UrsulaKLeGuin #HainishCycle #ScienceFiction #Fiction #NonBinary #bookrecommendation #readinglist2019 #booksireadin2019 #_bookshelf2019_ https://www.instagram.com/p/B2VLo_rphaB/?igshid=sq4potilmxk3

[davidamacylee]

🌟🌟🌟🌟⭐(4/5) . Read literally, Invisible Cities is the essential travel guide for the tourist of Kublai Khan’s empire in an age where fantasy and adventure are everyday realities. Read figuratively, it is a whimsical, shimmering pool that shows the looker what is inside of them by creating a world that could have or could still exist. Read philosophically, it is a tribute and a warning to the great cities of humankind. Read from the folk tale perspective, it is the clever retelling of the journey we take to find something worth living for and working toward out in the world, only to discover that it is our inner world which quells the soul’s hunger. . Invisible Cities is something like a collection of poetic essays. Marco Polo and Kublai Khan meet in the Khan’s garden and the boy traveler tells the emperor of all the cities he has seen in his travels. The Khan, at times boastful and at others pensive, demands story after story at an effort to get to the more profound reality that the traveler is trying to deliver. And though none of the stories have anything in common with each other, it seems the cities are all sewn of the same thread... . I give the book five stars for concept and execution. My four-star rating was for the experience of reading it, as it took me nearly a year to finish it. There’s no narrative through-line so it was difficult to follow the book’s trajectory. This book is not to be read like other books. . #InvisibleCities #ItaloCalvino #MarcoPolo #KublaiKhan #Poetry #Fiction #bookstagram #bookrecommendation #readinglist2019 #booksireadin2019 #_bookshelf2019_ https://www.instagram.com/p/B2Mob3sB8u6/?igshid=1h5zxtq4cbfh5

[davidamacylee]

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟(5/5) . Like honey is the sleep of the just. ————— Sometimes a journey makes itself necessary. ————— Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling. ————— Geryon’s life entered a numb time, caught between the tongue and the taste. ————— Although a monster Geryon could be charming in company. ————— “What is time made of?” Is a question that had long exercised Geryon. ————— A healthy volcano is an exercise in the uses of pressure. . Geryon, a red monster with wings. Herakles, and his heroic arrogance. Their young love, and the volcano they visited on the island of their youth. Their fates entangled, and their happenstance meeting years later in Buenos Aires, and the Patagonian volcano to which they travel. . Not quite a collection of poetry yet not a prosaic piece of literature. A gentle heartbeat and the guiding hand of Anne Carson lead us through the life of a misunderstood young boy who can never quite share his rich emotional world with those whom he loves. . To me, this novel is a sensitive and artistic answer to the question “Who hasn't asked oneself, am I a monster or is this what it means to be human?” . This may be my very favorite book. . #AutobiographyOfRed #AnneCarson #Geryon #Volcano #Poetry #Fiction #QueerFiction #QueerLiterature #GayFiction #GayLiterature #bookstagram #bookrecommendation #readinglist2019 #booksireadin2019 #_bookshelf2019_ (at Portland, Oregon) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0WlJ0YJlVi/?igshid=1r7qq4g1ez09g

[davidamacylee]

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟(5/5) . “Something beyond our understanding occurs in the genesis of Qualia-the transformation of an objective cerebral computation to a subjective experience.” . The problem of consciousness is one of humankind’s greatest mysteries—how does consciousness come about? What causes it? How can it be explained? Is it an illusion, or maybe something which all things in the universe experience in varying ways? Oliver Sacks, renowned British Neurologist, expands on these themes in River Of Consciousness in a way that answers many questions yet sparks even more. What takes a person from mere talent across the threshold to creativity? What is it like to be inside a mind riddled with Tourette’s? Can our memories be trusted or are they simply fabrications of our own subjective experience? What is perception, and how does it break down when the mind no longer functions as a whole? Sacks’ inquisitive angle on the forms and functions of consciousness inspire wonder and curiosity as he elucidates, in terms anyone can digest, the essential reality behind the human experience. Consciousness, it seems, is not as simple, straightforward or discrete as it seems to be... rather, the mind and the body are complex and ingenious mechanisms which work in harmony to create sense and sensation, and consciousness is the ever-changing river which flows through us. . I enjoyed listening to this book in audiobook format, but I will definitely be purchasing my own copy, probably a used copy, and reading it every few years. If you enjoy TED talks, Alan Watts recordings or nonfiction podcasts, you might enjoy listening to this book. . 🎧listened to in #audiobook format with the #Libby app🎧 . #TheRiverOfConsciousness #OliverSacks #neurology #neuroscience #consciousness #memory #creativity #perception #nonfiction #nonfic #nonfictionbooks #nonfictionliterature #nonficliterature #bookstagram #bookrecommendation #readinglist2019 #booksireadin2019 #_bookshelf2019_ (at Portland, Oregon) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0TjZMKJmMB/?igshid=ldquboa7u6nt

[davidamacylee]

🌟🌟⭐⭐⭐(2/5) . I’m giving the audiobook version I listened to two out of five stars because the reader performed all voices as caricature accents, an aspect which periodically ruined the listening experience. Despite being informative, unique and unexpectedly uplifting, pretty much every point of information or personal narrative was included in the Netflix adaptation and I much prefer the entertainment quality and sensitivity to character of the Netflix series. . 🎧listened to in #audiobook format with the #Libby app🎧 . #bookstagram #booksireadin2019 #readinglist2019 #_bookshelf2019_ #bookrecommendation #PiperKerman #OrangeIsTheNewBlack #OrangeIsTheNewBlackAudiobook #nonfiction #memoir (at Portland, Oregon) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz_r7XnJ3Mo/?igshid=l7d50ekgm9ym

[davidamacylee]

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟(5/5) . At 186 pages, this book can easily be read within a week or even in one sitting. Spanning the course of a day in the life of George, who has recently lost his life partner and lover Jim, this story tenderly and unapologetically renders the ebb and flow of life as it happens. Take a ride behind the eyes of a British college professor in 1960’s Los Angeles; think his thoughts, feel his emotions. Christopher Isherwood has somehow captured the quality of what it is like to be unobserved, to walk the line between grotesque and divine. . #ASingleMan #ChristopherIsherwood #RealisticFiction #QueerFiction #QueerLiterature #GayFiction #GayLiterature #bookstagram #bookrecommendation #readinglist2019 #booksireadin2019 #_bookshelf2019_ (at Portland, Oregon) https://www.instagram.com/p/BzoHy14JVcJ/?igshid=u74n3y047chg

[davidamacylee]

🌟🌟🌟 ⭐ ⭐(3/5) . Moment by moment, day by day, year by year, we follow two youths through the arc of World War II; a young but brilliant radio operator from Germany and a blind girl from Paris navigate the quickly-changing Europe of the 1940’s, tied together by their individual paths which will someday cross and a radio broadcast meant to inspire the minds of children and remind its listeners of the wonders of light and a love of life. The pacing makes this book feel like a journal, and listening to it as an audiobook brought a sense of the unrelenting march of the War. You can’t help but feel the heart of life speaking through Anthony Doerr’s words-it’s no wonder this book was an instant hit. . 🎧listened to in #audiobook format with the #Libby app🎧 . #bookstagram #booksireadin2019 #readinglist2019 #_bookshelf2019_ #bookrecommendation #anthonydoerr #worldwartwofiction #radio #paris #historicalfiction #allthelightwecannotsee (at Portland, Oregon) https://www.instagram.com/p/BzeS6KPpzcc/?igshid=1la165o8dp9g4

[davidamacylee]

🌟🌟🌟 🌟 ⭐(4/5) . "If there is one relationship that we all need to repair, it's the one with our body. Here's the way I like to look at it. If we broke our bodies down into the trillions of cells that they are and imagined those cells as our loyal subjects and our conscious mind as their ruler, what kind of ruler would we be? Most of us would be sadistic tyrants. We feed ourselves things that aren't helpful, we chastise them for the appearance they create, we force them into unnatural positions for long periods of time, and then we take all manner of drugs to shut out what they are trying to communicate with us." Own the Day, Own Your Life: Chapter 12 Aubrey Marcus . Ever felt like conventional health and optimization wisdom doesn’t add up and only serves to empty the wallet without cultivating a sense of well-being? Enter Aubrey Marcus, the best example I’ve found of a man raised in a culture of toxic masculinity who has mindfully worked to rise above the masses and craft a life of holistic health and happiness. His guide to the perfect day is filled with nutrition instruction that relies on verified biology, critical evaluation of the psychology of habits and choice, and an adorably boyish sense of humor. I recommend this book in audiobook format-listening to half an hour each day, this felt like the most useful self-help podcast series I’ve ever listened to. . 🎧listened to in #audiobook format with the #Libby app🎧 . #bookstagram #booksireadin2019 #readinglist2019 #_bookshelf2019_ #bookrecommendation #aubreymarcus #warriorpoet #warriorpoetproject #ownthedayownyourlife (at Portland, Oregon) https://www.instagram.com/p/BzJV_rbppKQ/?igshid=9hwy3yeu5moe