Book cover of The Secret Life: Three True Stories of the Digital Age

Book description

The slippery online ecosystem is the perfect breeding ground for identities: true, false, and in between. We no longer question the reality of online experiences but the reality of selfhood in the digital age.

In The Secret Life: Three True Stories, Andrew O'Hagan issues three bulletins from the porous border…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Secret Life as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Andrew O’Hagan is a contemporary master of the literary essay, and in this book we have three long non-fiction pieces linked by his investigations into the online world. O’Hagan was the ghostwriter for Julian Assange’s doomed autobiography, and here he tells the story of this adventure – it’s a publisher’s nightmare but a dream for the psychoanalyst, as the line between Assange’s invented self and the reality of his life begins to collapse. The other two essays also explore mercurial identities online, with a portrait of the rumored, shadowy inventor of Bitcoin, and the brief life of a Frankensteinian amalgam…

From Laurence's list on touching the reality of modern life.

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Book cover of These Blue Mountains

These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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