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Laura’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Laura’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Laura McNeal’s Followers (331)
2,015 books
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41 friends
2,925 books
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2,711 friends
114 books
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20 friends
789 books
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34 friends
918 books
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882 friends
1,432 books
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569 friends
608 books
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96 friends
1,901 books
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114 friends
More friends…
Laura McNeal
Goodreads Author
Born
The United States
Website
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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6 editions
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Crooked
by
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published
1999
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13 editions
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Dark Water
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published
2010
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20 editions
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Zipped
by
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published
2003
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13 editions
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The Incident on the Bridge
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published
2016
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9 editions
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Crushed
by
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published
2006
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2 editions
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The Swan's Nest
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published
2024
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4 editions
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The Decoding of Lana Morris
by
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published
2007
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10 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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2 editions
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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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Laura McNeal
wants to read
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Laura McNeal
liked
Sam McNeal's review
of
The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook:
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Laura McNeal
rated a book it was amazing
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| I love a chronicle of How We Got Like This, and this is an elegant, concise, wise history of why we worry so damned much about what other people think, and how it effects the way we spend our time. It’s not that the ideas were new to me, but de Botto ...more | |
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Laura McNeal
wants to read
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Laura McNeal
is currently reading
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Laura McNeal
rated a book it was amazing
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| This book makes a mournful, strange, deeply touching bookend to the marriage book I read last week: Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage. Would you rather be Belle Burden, adrift on the sea of confusion and cold betrayal, or Maralyn, adrift on a literal s ...more | |
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Laura McNeal
rated a book it was amazing
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
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Laura McNeal
wants to read
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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
What randomly selected book would you like to read in July?
by Ruta Sepetys
by Ned Vizzini
by Laura McNeal
by David Almond
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 | 628 | 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 | 342 | 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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2291 | 757 | 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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2503 | 773 | Aug 31, 2013 09:04PM | |
| Crazy Challenge C...: Zodiac challenge | 704 | 254 | 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 !
— 22532 members
— last activity Apr 13, 2026 03:25PM
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
— 234 members
— last activity Oct 04, 2025 06:18AM
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!
— 13017 members
— last activity Apr 22, 2026 06:28PM
This is a group for authors to discuss their craft, as well as publishing and book marketing.
