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Joe’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Joe’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Joe Kraus’s Followers (132)
1,628 books
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1,573 friends
1,222 books
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198 friends
918 books
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20 friends
405 books
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220 friends
4,539 books
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733 friends
1,688 books
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276 friends
2,018 books
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1,907 friends
1,366 books
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20 friends
More friends…
Joe Kraus
Goodreads Author
Member Since
June 2009
URL
https://www.goodreads.com/joekraus
More books by Joe Kraus…
Joe’s Recent Updates
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Joe Kraus
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Utter, inspired lunacy. I didn’t intend to buy this book. I was looking for something else on the shelf, and – when I saw Dan Chaon’s name – I recognized it as someone I’d been meaning to check out at some indefinite time down the road. I picked it up ...more |
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Joe Kraus
rated a book really liked it
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| I’ve been thinking a lot about pulp noir lately, and this is a good contemporary example. I can be a literary snob, of course. I write in genre sometimes, and it feels like a different exercise than trying to write literary fiction. I still feel that ...more | |
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Joe Kraus
rated a book really liked it
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Before I picked this up, I hadn’t realized it was a memoir. Or maybe a novella. Call it a memoir-ella – which is appropriate since that suffix is the Yiddish diminutive. Jacobson remains one of our great writers. He’s often called the British Philip R ...more |
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Joe Kraus
rated a book it was ok
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In general, I like Carrie Fisher, and my son routinely reminds me how funny she became in her later years. I’d just finished Keith Richards’s compelling memoir, Life, and this was on sale (and kind of short), so I thought why not. As a book, this is n ...more |
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Joe Kraus
rated a book really liked it
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This memoir feels a lot like Richards’s career. At its best, which is most of the book, it’s simply as good as rock memoir – even artistic memoir – gets. At its worst, it’s sloppy, self-indulgent, and plagued by substance abuse. I admit to being a big ...more |
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Joe Kraus
rated a book it was amazing
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| This is a “concept album” short story collection. Each of the stories Lev writes is set in (or somehow connected to) a house on Bethlehem Road in the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem. They come to us more or less chronologically, illustrating what Lev ...more | |
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Joe Kraus
rated a book liked it
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| I picked this one up because of a recent genealogical discovery. My ancestor – by way of two intervening, closed adoptions – was John Jacob Kimberlin, the first white settler in Scott County, Indiana. Kimberlin purchased his land with his Revolutiona ...more | |
"“You have to be a a little bit crazy [to understand it]--one of Pynchon’s characters, to mc Hicks McTaggart
Since I am teaching a Fall 2025 Detective Fiction class, and have read five or six of his books over the years, beginning in my graduate litera" Read more of this review » |
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"Originally printed by Fawcett Gold Medal in 1958, “I, Mobster” has now been republished by Cutting Edge Books. It was authored by “Anonymous,” purposefully it would appear because it is the tale of the rise and fall of a 1930’s New York mobster told "
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“You can't choose where you belong, and where you don't. But what if the place you don't belong is the only place you have left?”
― The Ghosts of Belfast
― The Ghosts of Belfast
“"Wonderful things can happen", Vincent said, "when you plant seeds of distrust in a garden of assholes."”
― Glitz
― Glitz
“Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing
1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
―
1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said”…he admonished gravely.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose.
6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.”
―
“I see no reason to keep silent about my enjoyment of the sound of my own voice as I work. ”
― Loitering with Intent
― Loitering with Intent
Jewish Book Carnival
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— last activity Dec 10, 2025 07:25PM
This is the GoodReads group for the Jewish Book Carnival, a monthly forum for sharing links and information on Jewish books and the blogs that cover t ...more
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Goodreads Librarians are volunteers who help ensure the accuracy of information about books and authors in the Goodreads' catalog. The Goodreads Libra ...more
World, Writing, Wealth
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Friends, would you care to partake in a learned discussion of current events, the global economy, writing, selling, film, and reading? Then gift us wi ...more
