"Resistance is first of all a matter of principle and a way to live, to make yourself one small republic of unconquered spirit."

Full engagement requires the ability to perceive both.

Affirmation.

This made me put the book down and stare into space for a while. I grew up with a suicidal mother. I heard this countless times as a child. And I remember vividly thinking the same thing: we didn't count.

In eleven years, my husband has given me many gifts. This simple quote on parchment paper framed beautifully is always my favorite.

"Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a very dangerous enemy indeed."

"You grew between the cracks of my skin, I built you, cell by cell, over nine full moons, a flower grown from blood. Somewhere in your beautiful mind lives the distant memory, of loving only the sound of my voice and the slow hammer of my heart, you trusted me before you knew me."

I love everything about this story: the style, the prose, dialogue (often monologue); I'll never stop loving Lucia; her wit and candor and perceptiveness and honesty and and and. I think despite her nihilistic tendencies, there's a part of Lucia that is actively engaged in finding meaning in her life. But that's the thing about Lucia: "Each person needs to have his or thing that they must do. Furthermore, they shouldn't tell anyone else about it."

"Something happens, maybe even something small, something no one even notices..."

This entire book. Everything.

It's just that, I'm already in such obsessive adoration of Lucia already, and then I read this.

"Isn't it obvious that the world is a meaningless place where there is a faint impression you can leave on each other by being compassionate, but not more than that?"

"and then I get called to the principal for having skipped detention, and then I am told: you have a week of detention. They don't understand--I can just read a book. It doesn't really matter where I am."

"Or, a few do."

Show-books

..."(which is why they all have to die)"

I can literally quote this entire book all over every platform of social media and be fine with the consequences.

Chumps! ❤️

😂 My Life

This ominous story is an examination of potential dangers and insidious nature of fear that exists in our every day lives while giving an inventory of the fragile dynamics and polarizing climate of marriage and how their individual neuroses go from friction to harmony within minutes. It's an honest account of the balance we seek and sometimes find in relationships and how that translates to the balance we desire to find in the world around us.

Page 6: "Maggie...dedicated herself anew to her sadness, to the Internet, to any story that might confirm her suspicions of the world, of the turbulent state of humanity."
And with that, Maggie, I'm along with you for this story. Because I get this. I've lived this. This makes more sense to me than anything else could, ever.

#momreads #childrensbooks

This is my second Hill (King) book, and it hit the spot for a fast paced, uncomplicated, easy read.
Horror, suspense, with a mix of psychological thriller, the story hit the ground running with a rush of his twisted imagination and descriptive storytelling.

Book mail! Tim Howard's autobiography on turning his "disabilities" into a unique advantage on the field where he found a passion and ability to hyper-focus his perceptiveness. This man inspires my son and inspires me as a mother of a child with Tourette's and OCD. #momsread

"You want to be an old lady with lively eyes, so it looks like you're always thinking of something funny. Like you're looking for trouble."

This expansive read covers the adult life of...can we even call him a "survivor"? Even in physical escape, we are left with our minds, which can lock us into suffering incomparable to the corporeal. The redeeming quality of Jude's story, is the hope found in his friendships: "I met people who, for whatever reason, decided to be my friends, and they taught me--everything, really. They made me, and make me, into someone better than I really am."

Short stories are typically my palette cleansers between larger, heavy books. I keep a book on hand for brief moments that I know I won't be able to devote to a novel of depth.
This book came with the sacrifice of shock, sometimes disgust, morbid-intrigue at each unique character providing a brief glimpse into society's outcasts, drifts from social norms, and humanity's underbelly, uncovering the unusual + absurd surviving among us.

I'm not able to review this yet. I'm not quite ready to be in any way articulate. But this quote really stands out to me about the essence of the story: "...and I met people who, for whatever reason, decided to be my friends, and they taught me--everything, really. They made me, and make me, into someone better than I really am."

Insist on your cup of stars.

"In his every day stands a tree, black and dying, with a single branch jutting to its right, a scarecrow's sole prosthetic, and it is from this branch that he hangs. Above him a rain is always misting, which makes the branch slippery. But he clings to it, as tired as he is, because beneath him is a hole bored into the earth so deep that he cannot see where it ends..."

"What's missing in you that you want someone else to provide?"

Life would happen to him, and he would have to try to answer it

I read someone once say something like, "I really get into Franzen. Everything but the birds. I just can't match his interest in them." I concur.

I'm not ready, Jude. I'm not ready.

I love Harold's objective honesty. I relate so much to his self-analysis of being a parent. "It must be an evolutionary stopgap--if we were all so specifically, vividly aware of what might go horribly wrong, we would none of us have children at all."

The cruel personification of the axiom of equality.
"x = x, x = x."

My life as told by children's books.