"I will write after work and on the weekends. That‘s what I tell myself. And, sure, I set my alarm for 5:00 a.m. once or twice. But who has any good ideas at 5:00 a.m.? It‘s like life is this powerful river, of doing laundry and buying groceries and driving to work and scrolling on my phone, and the weekends are so short."
"But the thing about quiet people is, we‘re only quiet because our brains are so busy overthinking everything."
100 books again this year. Down to the wire!
He wanted to put his arms around her, but she had a darkness that seemed to stand beside her like an acquaintance that would not go away.
My mother shrugs. “So what?” “That‘s it?” says Levi. “Ten years of Hebrew school, and it comes to that? So what?” “Let me tell you something,” says my mother. “Those are two of the most powerful words in the English language. Right between them is a free and happy life.”
Jiro looked at her. “You want to know what the key to a happy life is, Zoe?” “There‘s just one?” “Just one that matters,” said Jiro. “No expectations. No preferences. If you prefer one outcome over another in life, you will likely be disappointed. I prefer nothing and am always surprised.”
"People are lonely, is my point here. Many people can‘t say to those they know well what it is they feel they might want to say."
"The problem with so many people you encounter in life is that they‘re being the version of themselves they think they should be rather than the person they actually are."
"It was funny, she thought, how many relationships one could have with the same man, over the course of a lifetime together."
"There is a time for any fledgling artist where one‘s taste exceeds one‘s abilities. The only way to get through this period is to make things anyway."
"This is what time travel is. It‘s looking at a person, and seeing them in the present and the past, concurrently. And that mode of transport only worked with those one had known a significant time."
"Real love, the kind that makes you want to grow old together, makes you not just unafraid of all that time with one person but electrified by it."
"It‘s funny with siblings, how you think of them as just there, but then something great or awful happens that unearths and makes visible what Koreans call jeong. It‘s hard to explain in English; it‘s not any particular emotion—not affection or even love—but a complex bond defined by its depth and history: that sense of belonging to the same whole, your fates intertwined, impossible to sever no matter how much you may want to."
Enjoying this one so far at 27%... It's always a good feeling to read something that draws you in after reading a few books that were either slower paced or harder to get into. 📖 📚
"...that‘s one of the perils of being quiet, people invent personalities for you..."
"Women got that feeling about him, that funny one we all get when we know something isn‘t right, but we don‘t know how to politely extricate ourselves from the situation without escalating the threat of violence or harassment. That is not a skill women are taught, the same way men are not taught that it is okay to leave a woman alone if what she wants is to be left alone."
“Real life is unbelievable. Souls are snatched away from us, flesh and blood turn to dust, people you love betray you, men go to war over nothing. It‘s all preposterous. That‘s why we have novels. To make sense of things.”
"Sometimes when you read a book it‘s as if you were reading the story of your own life. That was what had happened to me. I woke up when I read the first page. I saw who I was and who I could be."
I can't believe that I actually read 100 books. (Last year, I read 67.) A lot of them were ebooks - about 70% of them.#goodreads #myyearinbooks
I am currently listening to this audiobook. Selma Blair narrates this, which adds so much. You hear the raw emotion in her voice.
On Book #3 in this series. I saw it advertised as Gilmore Girls meets Practical Magic. I can see what they mean. It's a cute, feel-good story about Rosemary and her daughter Athena learning that they are part of a magical family and all that entails. There has been a page-turning mystery element to each story so far. I'm 28% into this one and starting to see the latest mystery unfold. PWF & YA
“Time is wicked. It comes and goes like a thief in the night, stealing our youth, our beauty, and our bodies.”
"It feels as if the doors of her world have been thrown wide, so many rooms added to a house she thought she knew."
“Oh, I meant to tell you. You need a mantra to help you. You can borrow mine, if you want: ‘Whatever happens, love that.‘”
“You and Cullie have that too. You know that, right?” Suddenly Binji‘s eyes were burning with something Cullie had never seen there before. Her gaze moved from Cullie to Mom. “Love for what you do. Work that feels as essential as breathing, that lets you dig into yourself, makes you feel alive. Hold on to it. Everyone doesn‘t have that.”
I'm happy. It's better than I've done in a while. Here's to this many or more next year! 📚🥂
#myyearinbooks #goodreads
"Now I see that if I do not carry my past with me, it will wrap itself around my ankles and drag me down. There is no living without it. There is no pretending I am not the sum of all these things."
Looking forward to this one! Hoping to get to it this weekend. This was a #goodreadsgiveaway I just received! #beautifulcover And oh, yeah.... It's my 6th #litsyversary!
pickMy sisters and I started a book club just for us. This was pick #2. If my sister hadn't picked it, I don't think I would've picked it up. I like pretty much all genres, but I read fantasy less often. I ended up really enjoying it. Anxiously waiting to read book 2 in the series, because we said we wouldn't move on until we have our book club discussion for this one. One sister isn't finished yet... 😕
“You say you don‘t know the right choice, but I think you do. The answer‘s already in you. You just have to find the courage to say it out loud.”
"What I didn‘t know then was that every time you defer your dream, it grows a bit weaker, a little less urgent, until one day you‘ve all but forgotten it‘s there. Really, if Belle hadn‘t died, I wonder if anything about my life would‘ve changed. I didn‘t have what I really desired. But things were easy, and you can almost mistake that for happiness."
"Just think, each person you see has an entire life, filled with experiences and thoughts and people you‘ll never know about."
Is anyone else having issues with the Litsy app? It's been about 3 weeks since I could use it. I'm currently logged in on a web browser. #litsybugs 💻 😑
So far The Highland Fling is another fun and breezy read and has some humorous moments. I can't seem to stop lately. I have 4 books I'm currently in the middle of reading. It's an enjoyable problem. I can't seem to stop myself from starting another before finishing more than one of them. Ebooks... audiobooks... I'm supposed to be reading a paperback also but I keep putting it off. Gotta have a book for all possibly reading opportunities. 🤷🏻♀️
pickI enjoyed this. I've read a few of her books and I like the magical racism threaded throughout some of them. This story has some of that element. It's something a little different than my normal reading.
pickIf you're looking for a cute, fluffy, quick-reading romance, try this. It was purely feel-good enjoyment. 💝
“Are you okay?” Braden‘s voice startles her back into the car, out of the nonexistent conversation with someone long deceased. “Fine,” she says, but she hasn‘t been less fine in years. Braden‘s expression says he knows full well she‘s holding back. She waits for him to push her, to call her on her shit, remind her that “fine” stands for “fucked up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional.” But he doesn‘t. “Fair enough,” he says.
"But I realised now that some people were just so good at lying that you not only believed them, you actually did your best to. You so much want to believe that what they tell you is true, you do the lying for them."
pickI read this one pretty quick. It kept my interest the whole way through. Sort of an unexpected ending.
so-soOverall, I enjoyed reading this but it wasn't without flaws. Parts were a little unrealistic, but if emotion is what you're going for it has that. Love and loss.
pickI picked up this book as part of #WorldBookDay on Kindle. I really enjoyed this memoir. I read/listened to it about an equal amount of time. It's a bonus though that the author performed the audio, which I didn't realize at first. I think that the author did a great job making the reader visualize what her experience was like. Being that today is #EarthDay, I feel like this is a perfect book for climate change and environmental awareness.
"I remember my life before, when animals were just animals, and I hate myself for it. How could I have ever thought this? And how could I have ever thought I was any different from them?"
