36.) 08 May 2016-12 May 2016; $3.59
"Slow tears rose to [Elizabeth's] eyes: of joy, for what she had come to; of anguish, for the road that had brought her here."
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36.) 08 May 2016-12 May 2016; $3.59
"Slow tears rose to [Elizabeth's] eyes: of joy, for what she had come to; of anguish, for the road that had brought her here."
35.) 22 April 2016-7 May 2016; $2.00
"[Ralph] thought a great deal about [Isabel]; she was constantly present to his mind. At a time when his thoughts had been a good deal of a burden to him her sudden arrival, which promised nothing and was an open-handed gift of fate, had refreshed and quickened them, given them wings and something to fly for."
34.) 06 April 2016-21 April 2016; AO
"There it was before her - Life... terrible, hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you gave it a chance. There were the eternal problems: suffering, death, the poor... yet she said to all these children, You shall go through it all... love and ambition and being wretchedly alone in dreary places... then she said to herself, brandishing her sword at life, Nonsense. They will be perfectly happy."
33.) 28 March 2016-31 March 2016; $0.50
"...behind him were the shades of all manner of dogs, half-wolves and wild wolves, urgent and prompting, tasting the savor of the meat he ate, thirsting for the water he drank, scenting the wind with him...directing his actions, lying down to sleep with him when he lay down, and dreaming with him and beyond him and becoming themselves the stuff of his dream."
32.) 31 March 2016-21 April 2016; $0.38
"He always thought of the sea as la mar which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her... Some of the younger fishermen...spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favors, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them."
31.) 25 March 2016-28 March 2016; $3.59
"I hope you get where you're going, and be happy when you do."
30.) 27 Feb 2016-24 March 2016; $0.50
"I suppose it is possible to live as full a life in seventy hours as in seventy years...if there is not any such thing as a long time, nor the rest of our lives, nor from now on, but there is only now, the now is the thing to praise and I am very happy with it... And if you stop complaining and asking for what you will never get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span."
29.) 10 Feb 2016-22 Feb 2016; $0.50
"And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep."
28.) 23 Jan 2016-04 Feb 2016; $1.00
"At the last...his face appearing to us...smothered on the floor by a pile of white uniforms, he let himself cry out: a sound of cornered-animal fear and hate and surrender and defiance, that if you ever trailed coon or cougar or lynx is like the last sound the treed and shot and falling animal makes as the dogs get him, when he finally doesn't care anymore about anything but himself and his dying."
27.) 09 Jan 2016-23 Jan 2016; $0.25
"This is life, new & strange; strange because we fear it; new, because we have kept our eyes turned from it. This is life lived in cramped limits & expressing itself not in terms of our own good and bad, but in terms of its own fulfillment. Men are men & life is life, & we must deal with them as they are; and if we want to change them, we must deal with them in the form in which they exist & have their way."
26.) 28 Dec 2015-08 Jan 2016; $1.00
"When she...saw again the black ruins of Twelve Oaks, her head was raised high & something that was youth & beauty & potential tenderness was gone from her face forever...throughout the South for fifty years there would be bitter-eyed women who looked backward, to dead times, to dead men, evoking memories that hurt & were futile, bearing poverty with bitter pride...but Scarlett was never to look back."
25.) 15 Oct 2015-22 Oct 2015; $0.50
"[He told them] 'Stop picking around the edges of the world...we got a home in this rock...nobody starving in my home; nobody crying in my home, & if I got a home you got one too! Grab it...take it, hold it, make it...multiply it & pass it on - can you hear me? Pass it on!'
But they shot the top of his head off & ate his fine Georgia peaches. And even as boys these men began to die and were dying still."
24.) 09 Oct 2015-14 Oct 2015; AO
"Can I say in twenty minutes what was building twenty-one years and ended in twenty seconds...he was black and they shot him...he fell in a heap like any man and his blood spilled out like any blood...he struggled for Brotherhood on a hundred street corners and thought it would make him more human, but he died like any dog in the road... Now he's in a box and we're in there with him."
23.) 04 Oct 2015-08 Oct 2015; $0.39
"Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches."
21.) 29 Sept 2015-01 Oct 2015; $0.50
"But the wilderness had found him out...whispered to him things about himself which he did not know...he took counsel with this great solitude - and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core."
20.) 23 Sept 2015-29 Sept 2015; $0.50
"He's probably a coward," she said. "He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he's intelligent. He simply doesn't mention them."
19.) 20 Sept 2015-23 Sept 2015; $3.97
"My father said...the reason for living is getting ready to stay dead. I know at last what he meant & that he could not have known what he meant himself, because a man cannot know anything about cleaning up the house afterward. And so I have cleaned my house."
18.) 30 Aug 2015-05 Sept 2015; $15.25
"She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes...she looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things."
17.) 24 Aug 2015-27 Aug 2015; Already Owned
"Napoleon was now...always referred to in formal style as "our Leader, Comrade Napoleon"...[others talked] of...the goodness of his heart, and the deep love he bore to all animals...especially...who lived in ignorance and slavery on other farms."
16.) 24 Aug 2015-27 Aug 2015; Already Owned
"He held out his right hand in the moonlight. From the cut on his wrist the blood was still oozing. Every few seconds, a drop fell...drop, drop, drop. To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow. He had discovered Time and Death and God."
15.) 05 June 2015-24 Aug 2015; $6.25
"What a lousy earth! He wondered...how many honest men were liars, brave men cowards, loyal men traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people...had sold their souls to blackguards for petty cash, how many had never had souls?"
14.) 17 April 2015-01 June 2015; $0.43
"This race and this country and this life produced me, he said. I shall express myself as I am."
13.) 17 April 2015-17 April 2015; $0.50
"The barn...smelled of hay and it smelled of manure. It smelled of the perspiration of tired horses and the wonderful sweet breath of patient cows. It often had a sort of peaceful smell - as though nothing bad could happen ever again in the world."
12.) 03 March 2015-07 March 2015; $0.43
"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. Then gradually time awakened again and moved sluggishly on."
11.) 25 Feb 2015-01 March 2015; Already Owned
"His fingers were black and broken, but the phalanges, the whole carpus, the strong shapely wrist were far, far finer than mine: I have hurt too much too many bodies with my twisted poor hands to be proud of them."
10.) 07 Nov 2014-25 Feb 2015; $0.50
"...no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools."
9.) 11 Aug 2014-02 Nov 2014; Already Owned
"We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves."
8.) 29 June 2014-07 Aug 2014; $0.10
"He forgot his wounds, his hunger and thirst, and became fear; hopeless fear on flying feet, rushing through the forest toward the open beach."
7.) 28 July 2014-03 Aug 2014; $1.00
"...suddenly there was Sweet Home rolling, rolling out before her eyes...it never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too. Fire and brimstone all right, but hidden in lacy gloves."
6.) 03 June 2014; $5.95
I've made only a few rules for myself on this reading challenge - buy each title as cheaply as possible, and read AT LEAST 100 pages before deciding to put it down for good. I made it through thirty and had to give it up. My apologies, Mr. Joyce.
5.) 31 May 2014-03 June 2014; $2.92
"I start to wonder why us need love? Why us suffer. Why us black. Why us men and women...it don't mean nothing if you don't ast why you here, period...I think us here to wonder...the more I wonder," he say, "the more I love."
4.) 09 May 2014-31 May 2014; $0.50
"I wanted you to see what real courage is...it's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."
3.) 06 Jan 2014-19 March 2014; $0.44
"In the evening a strange thing happened: the twenty families became one family, the children were the children of all. The loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the West was one dream...and every morning the world tore down like a circus."
2.) 19 Dec 2013-06 Jan 2014; Already Owned
"...you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior...happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to."
1.) 24 Nov 2013-05 Dec 2013; $1.00
"...[there is] a satisfactory hint of the unreality of reality, a promise that the rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy's wing."
I have been reading through Radcliffe's 100 Best Novels since November 2013, all the while tracking how long each took to read, how much I paid for it, and writing down my favorite passages. I don't know when I'll be done, but it has been a fun ride.
