As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.

The narrative is made up of many such understandings, tacit agreements small and large, to overlook the observable in the interests of obtaining a dramatic storyline.

But, having seen that which eyes, upon seeing, diminish, she had put herself in danger of being “herself”—a thing tradition did not protect. -Preciousness

A hot summer mystery, saturated in Jameson, drifting on the tense waves of LA Palm-thick sizzle. A foray into the classic noir genre, an amble into a sympathetic journalist character who we can or cannot trust. It‘s a cliche of a femme fatale, or is it. It‘s a fever dream suspended in a familiar heat wave, punctuated with the perfect simile. It‘s overall a stunning bit of detective fiction that will envelop you in the world of Jimmy Keegan.

I love this story! I had seen the movie years ago and I think Elijah Woods‘ performance holds up to the Safron Foer character.

“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.” Maybe describing the task of reading this one...made up for by the hilarious hijinks and creative storytelling!

I don‘t know what‘s wrong with me, but I really didn‘t like this book. It‘s supposed to be a more profound farewell to arms, but for me it was a more boring, more sexist iteration. Of course Hemingway writes wonderfully, of course there are beautiful and touching sentences, I just struggled so hard to pay attention from the opening through to the end. And Maria, what an awful female character, she‘s the epitome of damsel in distress.

“The innocent are so few that two of them seldom meet—when they do meet, their victims lie strewn all around.”

Being out in the field gave me more time to read than I could have hoped for. Every time I read Carver I‘m floored by the apparent simplicity of his stories that simultaneously tear up your heart and mind by the end.

“People seemed so joyous tonight, yet it was the same world it ever was, and they all had forgotten. When a baby is born it‘s fuse lights. The ticking begins, and the fire starts fizzing down its length.”

For there is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is misfortune in not loving. All of us, today, are longing for this misfortune. For violence and hate to dry up the heart itself; the long fight for justice exhausts the love that nevertheless gave birth to it. In the clamor in which we live, Love is impossible and justice does not suffice.

„Creativity is on the side of health — it isn‘t the thing that drives us mad; it is the capacity in us that tries to save us from madness.“

We mostly arrested the little people—smugglers, scouts, mules, coyotes. I watched as a knowing look spread across his face. His eyes met mine and held them until I turned to look away. But mostly I arrested migrants, I confessed. People looking for a better life.

Amazing and poignant story of a psychologist deployed with the marines in a combat hospital. This hit close to home since I‘m now working with a combat support hospital. I can‘t imagine how hard it is to be deployed in a combat zone and leave babies behind. Epic sacrifice.

I think in my own way I‘m aware of this danger—probably through experience—and that‘s why I‘ve had to constantly keep my body in motion, in some cases pushing myself to the limit, in order to heal the loneliness I feel inside and to put it into perspective

That finger had pulled a trigger in a war. That finger had touched my mother in tender ways I did not fully comprehend. I wanted to talk, to say something, to ask questions. But I couldn‘t. All the words were stuck in my throat. So I just nodded.

The library has the most beautiful copy of this book! I love the illustration and it was so fun to finally read this cult classic. The movie was the first thing I saw on DVD (remember those?) and I‘ve seen it so many times since. The humor, romance and adventure are unbeatable.

There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship's, smooths and contains the rocker. It's an inside kind--wrapped tight like skin. Then there is the loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive. On its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one's own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.

This book is an insightful pit-gazing exploration of death. Barnes uses literary examples, writerly deaths, and ultimately modernity to explore our innate fear of death. He writes with a gentle agnosticism that takes into account faith, atheism and a liberal middleground to work towards an understanding. The writing itself is characterized by tension between fact and memory. Man cannot look to the past or future without the tint of his own mind.

Lee writes a compelling story, which illuminates the struggle of people without a place in the world. Koreans, forced out of their home by war settle in Japan, a country with no love for them. Amid war, disease, money/food shortages this family endures necessity and the pain of loss. It leaves them permanently altered. Perhaps their acceptance allows resilience through hardship, or only resignation to the relentless turn of the wheel of fortune.

We feel an affinity with a certain thinker because we agree with him;or because he shows us what we were already thinking;...

‘He could not overstep the barriers which the conventions of his superiors had built up to protect their weakness against him. He could not invade the magic circle which protects a priest from attack by anybody, especially by a low-caste man. So in the highest moment of his strength, the slave in him asserted itself, and he lapsed back, wild with torture, biting his lips, ruminating his grievances‘

The truth never shines forth, as the saying goes, because the only truth is that which is known to no one and remains untransmitted, that which is not translated into words or images, that which remains concealed and unverified, which is perhaps why we recount so much or even everything, to make sure that nothing has ever really happened, not once it‘s been told.

...and time moved on in the way it always would, always will, then and now intertwined, losing uniqueness, difference, distinction, subject only to laws of human consciousness.

‘In the south they are convinced that they have bloodied their place with history, in the West we do not believe that anything we do can bloody the land, or change it, or touch it. How could it have come to this?‘

‘Why bother chasing ghosts and trying to solve insoluble mysteries, when life was there, in all its simplicity, beneath the sun?‘

GERMAIN: And what do you do at night?— EINSTEIN: Ah, at night... at night the stars come out.—the stars in the sky?—The stars in my head.

“If you like the book, fine; if you don‘t, don‘t read it”

“The best was having nothing. No hope. No name in the throat and finding the breath in you, the body, to ask.”

“220. Imagine someone saying ‘Our fundamental situation is joyful.‘ Now imagine believing it. 221. Or forget belief: imagine feeling, even if for a moment that it were true”

“Consider this my suicide note. As I write these words by candlelight, in a location I cannot mention, I do not fear for my future. I understand that I have no future. My only fear is that what happened here will on day be forgotten...let me tell you”

Bookish resolutions: like several others I plan to get into the stacks in my house this year, I‘m also moving house to Germany for three years so I hope to read at least one book in German.

“I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile, and cunning”

And like the sea God was silent.

I‘ve been reading Erin‘s blog for a couple years and finally purchased her book. Her writing about living with less is so well formed. She knows how to connect with her reader on a practical level while also allowing her romanticism to run free over the page. I‘m continually inspired by her efforts to live consciously and beautifully.

“It seemed to Scobie later that this was the ultimate border he had reached in happiness: being in darkness, alone, with the rain falling, without love or pity”

“She has ripped my heart out with her monster claws”

The single finest, most perceptive, most gut-wrenching incandescent fucking piece of prose ever not written by somebody called Jonathan something.

“He‘s listened to Dylan. He‘s skimmed Kerouac. He knows that if you‘re a disaffected young American and you‘re looking to find yourself, then the place to look is somewhere between your current location and the other side of the country”

Cunt: clearly not a book that's going to give a delicate, demure or subtle presentation. Inga Muscio sets out to redeem a damnable word which has been irreversibly (or so it seemed) tied to negativity and shame. This book covers a variety of topics from books and art, to consumerism and prostitution. Muscio's Declaration of Independence encourages us to defend womankind, to be outspoken in our sisterhood and work openly to end patriarchy.

Saunders chooses to alternate between using bits of historical pieces to form full accounts and a fictional narrative told by the deceased who are in the graveyard when Lincoln's son arrives. Saunders's prose is great when it's his part of the story, when he shifts to snippets of historical writing it feels fragmented and took me out of the story. I thought this was an interesting, experimental narrative construct but it didn't keep me engaged.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1915941783

I truly do not know how an author creates a story with such simple language that can literally tear at you soul. This is the first book in a long stretch that has wrung the tears from my face like a wet rag.

'No--the stars are close and dear and I have joined the brotherhood of the worlds. And everything's holy--everything, even me.'

That feeling when you've started 8 books and are at various points in all of them but haven't finished anything in a while...

"He's pointed out a fundamental flaw in how we as Americans claim we see equality. 'I don't care if you're black, white, brown, yellow, red, green, or purple.' We've all said it. Posited as proof of our nonprejudicial ways, but if you painted any one of us purple or green we'd be mad as hell."

This book is truth and lies. Le Guin describes a world that strongly evokes the other since it necessarily includes the experiences of an alien on a foreign planet. In this book deep metaphysical ideas are explored and a foreign world is touched but not fully described. The prose is deeply involving and the world is deeply described. This novel draws the reader into a cold world of androgynous and somewhat primitive people.

But my experience in this world has been that the people who believe themselves to be white are obsessed with the politics of oppression and of exoneration.

Devastatingly inspirational.