Eitanli/goodreads huggingface dataset:
House of Sand and Fog
by Andre Dubus III
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Adult Fiction, Novels, Literature, Book Club
Average rating on Goodreads: 3.86

In this “page-turner with a beating heart” (Boston Globe), a recovering alcoholic and addict down on her luck struggles to hold on to her home in California. But this becomes contested territory when a recent immigrant from the Middle East—a former colonel in the Iranian Air Force—becomes determined to restore his family’s dignity through buying the house. When the woman’s lover, a married cop, intervenes, he goes to extremes to win her love. Andre Dubus III’s unforgettable characters—people with ordinary flaws, looking for a small piece of ground to stand on—careen toward inevitable conflict. An “affecting, subtle portrait of two hostile but equally fragile camps” (The New Yorker), their tragedy paints a shockingly true picture of the country we still live in today, two decades after this book’s first publication.
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
by Hannah  Green
Genres: Fiction, Psychology, Young Adult, Mental Health, Classics, Mental Illness, Contemporary
Average rating on Goodreads: 3.88

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden is the story of a sixteen-year-old who retreats from reality into the bondage of a lushly imagined but threatening kingdom, and her slow and painful journey back to sanity.Chronicles the three-year battle of a mentally ill, but perceptive, teenage girl against a world of her own creation, emphasizing her relationship with the doctor who gave her the ammunition of self-understanding with which to help herself."I wrote this novel, which is a fictionalized autobiography, to give a picture of what being schizophrenic feels like and what can be accomplished with a trusting relationship between a gifted therapist and a willing patient. It is not a case history or study. I like to think it is a hymn to reality." —Joanne Greenberg
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
by Shirley Jackson
Genres: Horror, Classics, Fiction, Gothic, Mystery, Audiobook, Thriller
Average rating on Goodreads: 3.95

Shirley Jackson’s beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family’s dark secretTaking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate. This edition features a new introduction by Jonathan Lethem.
Death in Venice
by Thomas Mann
Genres: Classics, Fiction, German Literature, Literature, Germany, Novels, LGBT
Average rating on Goodreads: 3.71

The world-famous masterpiece by Nobel laureate Thomas Mann -- here in a new translation by Michael Henry Heim.Published on the eve of World War I, a decade after Buddenbrooks had established Thomas Mann as a literary celebrity, Death in Venice tells the story of Gustav von Aschenbach, a successful but aging writer who follows his wanderlust to Venice in search of spiritual fulfillment that instead leads to his erotic doom.In the decaying city, besieged by an unnamed epidemic, he becomes obsessed with an exquisite Polish boy, Tadzio. "It is a story of the voluptuousness of doom," Mann wrote. "But the problem I had especially in mind was that of the artist's dignity."
Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower, #4)
by Stephen King
Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Science Fiction, Westerns, Adventure, Audiobook
Average rating on Goodreads: 4.26

Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Jake’s pet bumbler survive Blaine the Mono’s final crash, only to find themselves stranded in an alternate version of Topeka, Kansas, one that has been ravaged by the superflu virus. While following the deserted I-70 toward a distant glass palace, they hear the atonal squalling of a thinny, a place where the fabric of existence has almost entirely worn away. While camping near the edge of the thinny, Roland tells his ka-tet a story about another thinny, one that he encountered when he was little more than a boy. Over the course of one long magical night, Roland transports us to the Mid-World of long-ago and a seaside town called Hambry, where Roland fell in love with a girl named Susan Delgado, and where he and his old tet-mates Alain and Cuthbert battled the forces of John Farson, the harrier who—with a little help from a seeing sphere called Maerlyn’s Grapefruit—ignited Mid-World’s final war.
The Exorcist
by William Peter Blatty
Genres: Horror, Fiction, Classics, Paranormal, Thriller, Supernatural, Fantasy
Average rating on Goodreads: 4.20

Georgetown, Washington D.C. Actress and divorced mother Chris MacNeil starts to experience 'difficulties' with her usually sweet-natured eleven-year-old daughter Regan. The child becomes afflicted by spasms, convulsions and unsettling amnesiac episodes; these abruptly worsen into violent fits of appalling foul-mouthed curses, accompanied by physical mutation. Medical science is baffled by Regan's plight and, in her increasing despair, Chris turns to troubled priest and psychiatrist Damien Karras, who immediately recognises something profoundly malevolent in Regan's distorted fetures and speech. On Karras's recommendation, the Church summons Father Merrin, a specialist in the exorcism of demons . . .
The Tiger's Wife
by Téa Obreht
Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Magical Realism, Literary Fiction, Book Club, Fantasy, War
Average rating on Goodreads: 3.41

Weaving a brilliant latticework of family legend, loss, and love, Téa Obreht, the youngest of The New Yorker’s twenty best American fiction writers under forty, has spun a timeless novel that will establish her as one of the most vibrant, original authors of her generation.In a Balkan country mending from years of conflict, Natalia, a young doctor, arrives on a mission of mercy at an orphanage by the sea. By the time she and her lifelong friend Zóra begin to inoculate the children there, she feels age-old superstitions and secrets gathering everywhere around her. Secrets her outwardly cheerful hosts have chosen not to tell her. Secrets involving the strange family digging for something in the surrounding vineyards. Secrets hidden in the landscape itself.But Natalia is also confronting a private, hurtful mystery of her own: the inexplicable circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. After telling her grandmother that he was on his way to meet Natalia, he instead set off for a ramshackle settlement none of their family had ever heard of and died there alone. A famed physician, her grandfather must have known that he was too ill to travel. Why he left home becomes a riddle Natalia is compelled to unravel. Grief struck and searching for clues to her grandfather’s final state of mind, she turns to the stories he told her when she was a child. On their weeklytrips to the zoo he would read to her from a worn copy of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, which he carried with him everywhere; later, he told her stories of his own encounters over many years with “the deathless man,” a vagabond who claimed to be immortal and appeared never to age. But the most extraordinary story of all is the one her grandfather never told her, the one Natalia must discover for herself. One winter during the Second World War, his childhood village was snowbound, cut off even from the encroaching German invaders but haunted by another, fierce presence: a tiger who comes ever closer under cover of darkness. “These stories,” Natalia comes to understand, “run like secret rivers through all the other stories” of her grandfather’s life. And it is ultimately within these rich, luminous narratives that she will find the answer she is looking for.
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
by Haruki Murakami
Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Japan, Japanese Literature, Science Fiction, Contemporary
Average rating on Goodreads: 4.13

'A narrative particle accelerator that zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and Bob Dylan, unicorn skulls and voracious librarians, John Coltrane and Lord Jim. Science fiction, detective story and post-modern manifesto all rolled into one rip-roaring novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami's international following. Tracking one man's descent into the Kafkaesque underworld of contemporary Tokyo, Murakami unites East and West, tragedy and farce, compassion and detachment, slang and philosophy.'
Novel with Cocaine
by M. Ageyev
Genres: Fiction, Russia, Russian Literature, Classics, Literature, Novels, 20th Century
Average rating on Goodreads: 3.82

A Dostoevskian psychological novel of ideas, Novel with Cocaine explores the interaction between psychology, philosophy, and ideology in its frank portrayal of an adolescent's cocaine addiction. The story relates the formative experiences of Vadim at school and with women before he turns to drug abuse and the philosophical reflections to which it gives rise. Although Ageyev makes little explicit reference to the Revolution, the novel's obsession with addictive forms of thinking finds resonance in the historical background, in which "our inborn feelings of humanity and justice" provoke "the cruelties and satanic transgressions committed in its name.
The Social Contract
by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, Classics, History, France, Political Science
Average rating on Goodreads: 3.78

"Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains."These are the famous opening words of a treatise that has not ceased to stir vigorous debate since its first publication in 1762. Rejecting the view that anyone has a natural right to wield authority over others, Rousseau argues instead for a pact, or ‘social contract’, that should exist between all the citizens of a state and that should be the source of sovereign power. From this fundamental premise, he goes on to consider issues of liberty and law, freedom and justice, arriving at a view of society that has seemed to some a blueprint for totalitarianism, to others a declaration of democratic principles.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz (The Tattooist of Auschwitz, #1)
by Heather   Morris
Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical, Audiobook, World War II, Holocaust, Romance
Average rating on Goodreads: 4.29

In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners.Imprisoned for more than two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism—but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his privileged position to exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive.One day in July 1942, Lale, prisoner 32407, comforts a trembling young woman waiting in line to have the number 34902 tattooed onto her arm. Her name is Gita, and in that first encounter, Lale vows to somehow survive the camp and marry her.A vivid, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful re-creation of Lale Sokolov's experiences as the man who tattooed the arms of thousands of prisoners with what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is also a testament to the endurance of love and humanity under the darkest possible conditions.
The Steward (Weald Fae Journals, #1)
by Christopher  Shields
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Fae, Urban Fantasy, Fiction, Paranormal, Magic
Average rating on Goodreads: 3.93

Maggie O’Shea expected the worst when her family relocated from the lively beaches of Boca Raton to the secluded forests of the Ozark Mountains. What she didn’t expect was a new beginning – one full of Fae, magical powers, dangerous physical and mental trials, and two surprisingly gorgeous young men. These aren’t the fairies you’re familiar with, but dangerous superpowers embroiled in an enduring struggle among themselves over the fate of all humanity. Some want to protect us, and others would love nothing more than to see us, and especially fifteen-year-old Maggie, dead and buried. Now, torn between her new duties as Steward of the most sacred Fae land and her burgeoning love for Gavin, a powerful Fae, Maggie must fight to protect her family, her friends, herself, and the fate of the entire world.Join Maggie as she learns that fairy lore is not as far from the truth as she had believed, but neither is it anything like the tales in books or movies. As she navigates the treacherous schemes of the magical Fae, Maggie must become a quick study if she hopes to protect the lives of many, and possibly all, people from the insidious plot the Unseelie Fae have planned for centuries.The Steward is the first book in the four part series: the Weald Fae Journals by Christopher Shields.
The Collector
by John Fowles
Genres: Fiction, Classics, Horror, Thriller, Crime, Mystery, Novels
Average rating on Goodreads: 3.98

Withdrawn, uneducated and unloved, Frederick collects butterflies and takes photographs. He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda. When he wins the pools he buys a remote Sussex house and calmly abducts Miranda, believing she will grow to love him in time.
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
by Malcolm Gladwell
Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Business, Audiobook, Self Help, Sociology, Science
Average rating on Goodreads: 3.96

In his #1 bestselling books The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell has explored the ways we understand and change our world. Now he looks at the complex and surprising ways the weak can defeat the strong, the small can match up against the giant, and how our goals (often culturally determined) can make a huge difference in our ultimate sense of success. Drawing upon examples from the world of business, sports, culture, cutting-edge psychology, and an array of unforgettable characters around the world, David and Goliath is in many ways the most practical and provocative book Malcolm Gladwell has ever written.
Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
by Patrick Radden Keefe
Genres: Nonfiction, History, Audiobook, Biography, True Crime, Business, Science
Average rating on Goodreads: 4.55

The highly anticipated portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, by the prize-winning, bestselling author of Say Nothing. The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions: Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations to the arts and sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing OxyContin, a blockbuster painkiller that was a catalyst for the opioid crisis.Empire of Pain is a masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, exhaustively documented and ferociously compelling.
Evermore (The Immortals, #1)
by Alyson Noel
Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy, Paranormal, Romance, Paranormal Romance, Supernatural, Fiction
Average rating on Goodreads: 3.59

The first book in Alyson Noël's extraordinary new Immortals series. Enter an enchanting new world, where true love never dies...After a horrible accident claims the lives of her family, sixteen-year-old Ever Bloom can see people's auras, hear their thoughts, and know someone's entire life story by touching them. Going out of her way to avoid human contact to suppress her abilities, she has been branded a freak at her new high school—but everything changes when she meets Damen Auguste.Damen is gorgeous, exotic and wealthy. He's the only one who can silence the noise and random energy in her head—wielding a magic so intense, it's as though he can peer straight into her soul. As Ever is drawn deeper into his enticing world of secrets and mystery, she's left with more questions than answers. And she has no idea just who he really is—or what he is. The only thing she knows to be true is that she's falling deeply and helplessly in love with him.
High-Rise
by J.G. Ballard
Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopia, Classics, Horror, Audiobook, Thriller
Average rating on Goodreads: 3.61

When a class war erupts inside a luxurious apartment block, modern elevators become violent battlegrounds and cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on "enemy" floors. In this visionary tale, human society slips into violent reverse as once-peaceful residents, driven by primal urges, re-create a world ruled by the laws of the jungle.
A Gracious Enemy
by Michael G. Kramer
Genres: War, History, Nonfiction, Epic, Contemporary
Average rating on Goodreads: 4.33

The full story of the three Indochina Wars. Including warts and all. The first was the Indochinese People fighting against the French colonists and their suppliers and allies from the USA. The second was the people of Indochina (Cambodia, Laos & Vietnam) fighting against an allied coalition force made up of Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Thailand, South Vietnam and the USA. The Second Indochina War is usually referred to as the Vietnam War. This book examines the re-adjustment of Vietnamese society after the uprising of the Tay Son Brothers in 1770, their stopping of the Trin and Nguyen families oppression of the Vietnamese people. The coming of the Catholic Church and how this affected the people is examined. As well the activities of Pineau de Bahrain, who was a missionary and the Bishop of Adran - he did much to ensure the French takeover of the majority of South East Asia. That was followed by the French takeover and full colonisation and rule by France. To better control the people, the French forbade the use of Chinese characters in writing and transcribed the entire Vietnamese language into the Latin alphabet, which was then taught in all schools. During WW2, Asian people saw that the Caucasian people could be beaten, That resulted in the First Indochina War, which ended with the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The Second Indochina War ended in 1975 with the withdrawal of the last American soldier from Vietnam. The Third Indochina War ended when the Vietnamese Army invaded Kampuchea, resulting in Vietnamese tanks entering its capital while the Pol Pot administration fled into the jungle.
Mort (Discworld, #4; Death, #1)
by Terry Pratchett
Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Humor, Comedy, Science Fiction Fantasy, Audiobook, Novels
Average rating on Goodreads: 4.24

Death comes to us all. When he came to Mort, he offered him a job.After being assured that being dead was not compulsory, Mort accepted. However, he soon found that romantic longings did not mix easily with the responsibilities of being Death's apprentice...
Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
by Lundy Bancroft
Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Self Help, Feminism, Relationships, Abuse, Mental Health
Average rating on Goodreads: 4.45

In this groundbreaking bestseller, Lundy Bancroft—a counselor who specializes in working with abusive men—uses his knowledge about how abusers think to help women recognize when they are being controlled or devalued, and to find ways to get free of an abusive relationship.He says he loves you. So...why does he do that? You’ve asked yourself this question again and again. Now you have the chance to see inside the minds of angry and controlling men—and change your life. In Why Does He Do That? you will learn  • The early warning signs of abuse• The nature of abusive thinking• Myths about abusers• Ten abusive personality types• The role of drugs and alcohol• What you can fix, and what you can’t• And how to get out of an abusive relationship safely“This is without a doubt the most informative and useful book yet written on the subject of abusive men. Women who are armed with the insights found in these pages will be on the road to recovering control of their lives.”—Jay G. Silverman, Ph.D., Director, Violence Prevention Programs, Harvard School of Public Health
White Teeth
by Zadie Smith
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Novels, Literary Fiction, British Literature, Literature, Historical Fiction
Average rating on Goodreads: 3.79

At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn’t quite match her name (Jamaican for “no problem”). Samad’s late-in-life arranged marriage (he had to wait for his bride to be born), produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal’s every effort to direct them, and a renewed, if selective, submission to his Islamic faith. Set against London’s racial and cultural tapestry, venturing across the former empire and into the past as it barrels toward the future, White Teeth revels in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, confounding expectations, and embracing the comedy of daily existence.
Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone
by Brené Brown
Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Psychology, Audiobook, Personal Development, Leadership, Spirituality
Average rating on Goodreads: 4.14

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A timely and important book that challenges everything we think we know about cultivating true belonging in our communities, organizations, and culture, from the #1 bestselling author of Rising Strong, Daring Greatly, and The Gifts of ImperfectionREESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK"True belonging doesn't require us to change who we are. It requires us to be who we are." Social scientist Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW, has sparked a global conversation about the experiences that bring meaning to our lives--experiences of courage, vulnerability, love, belonging, shame, and empathy. In Braving the Wilderness, Brown redefines what it means to truly belong in an age of increased polarization. With her trademark mix of research, storytelling, and honesty, Brown will again change the cultural conversation while mapping a clear path to true belonging.Brown argues that we're experiencing a spiritual crisis of disconnection, and introduces four practices of true belonging that challenge everything we believe about ourselves and each other. She writes, "True belonging requires us to believe in and belong to ourselves so fully that we can find sacredness both in being a part of something and in standing alone when necessary. But in a culture that's rife with perfectionism and pleasing, and with the erosion of civility, it's easy to stay quiet, hide in our ideological bunkers, or fit in rather than show up as our true selves and brave the wilderness of uncertainty and criticism. But true belonging is not something we negotiate or accomplish with others; it's a daily practice that demands integrity and authenticity. It's a personal commitment that we carry in our hearts." Brown offers us the clarity and courage we need to find our way back to ourselves and to each other. And that path cuts right through the wilderness. Brown writes, "The wilderness is an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching. It is a place as dangerous as it is breathtaking, a place as sought after as it is feared. But it turns out to be the place of true belonging, and it's the bravest and most sacred place you will ever stand."
Time Enough for Love
by Robert A. Heinlein
Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Time Travel, Fantasy, Classics, Speculative Fiction
Average rating on Goodreads: 3.97

The capstone and crowning achievement of Heinlein's famous Future History, Time Enough for Love follows Lazarus Long through a vast and magnificent timescape of centuries and worlds. Heinlein's longest and most ambitious work, it is the story of a man so in love with Life that he refused to stop living it; and so in love with Time that he became his own ancestor.