"It may be said Jakobson works with poetry because he has a Pushkinian love of order; Bakhtin, on the contrary, loves novels because he is a baggy monster."

"The artists claimed it was the quintessential canvas. / Call it love, they insisted, and look how love persists. The widows said: / call it death or call it loneliness." - Sue Goyette

This book was the angriest in the series thus far and I loved every word.

"The solitude of women's minds is regrettable, I said to myself, it's a waste to be separated from each other, without procedures, without tradition." - Elena

"I ruled out anything ever happening between us. Too much fear, if we had been seen we would have been beaten to death." - Elena speaking of sex between her and Lila's younger selves

this is my jam

"How many who had been girls with us were no longer alive, had disappeared from the face of the earth because of illness, because their nervous systems had been unable to endure the sandpaper of torments, because their blood had been spilled."

This series is brilliant and compelling and intricate and grandiose and intimate. I haven't read anything else like it. It rushes the reader through the story and then the last sentence deposits them on a precipice--never before have I felt so acutely synchronized with a narrator. I expect the third and fourth will be equally outstanding and am delighted that I can begin them tomorrow.

"I know I'm supposed to think beautiful things, I know I have to resign myself, but I can't do it, I see no reason for resignation and no beauty." - Lila on pregnancy

"If nothing could save us, not money, not a male body, and not even studying, we might as well destroy everything immediately."

"Strangers' faces hold no secrets because the imagination does not invest them with any. But the face of a lover is an unknown precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself."

I loved loved loved this book.

"We traded an accordion of hours for wood."

"I hope the leaving is joyful - and I hope never to return - "

💜💜💜

joan didion 💙

knit knit knit

no, YOU'RE identifying your succulents by family/genus/species

This book is the whole of my heart.

I love Clara Parkes' other books. That is all.

Yikes, this is a hard one to read post-diagnoses of chronic illness! I'm slowly getting through it and I appreciate the clear and concise descriptions of the interrelated neural, immune, endocrine & emotional systems. It's easy to follow and well-written - it just makes me feel very sad.

Had to return this one before starting it! Someday I will learn not to put eight dozen books on hold at the same time. Looking forward to reading it soon!

I am drawn to books with Death as a character. This Death experiments with the rules, mails lilac-coloured letters to the nearly dead, and falls in love - all written in Saramago's signature strange, elegant, and graceful style. My favourite book from one of my favourite authors.

Every sentence in this book is perfect. It is absolutely boring in a number of ways, and yet it is so compelling and enthralling I always read it in one sitting. Ishiguro brilliantly captures the internal reality of a man so at odds with the external world and yet completely unaware of it.

I love this book. In six short sketches, Eco maps out a series of thoughts on the construction of meaning while reading text - an ongoing negotiation between the text and the reader where the model author uses signposts and nuance to guide the model reader to the intended meaning. Brilliant.

I'm always super hesitant to read collections of folklore compiled by ethnographers who aren't part of the traditions being described. At the same time I want to learn more about First Peoples of Vancouver Island and this was the first of the library books I put on hold to come in.

My partner travels a lot and when we met they had only cactus plants in the house. I travelled with them for a long time, and now whenever they leave for tour I find more succulents to bring home as welcome-home gifts for them.

After reading Play It as It Lays, I put a dozen Didion books on hold. This memoir-style collection of essays traces her attachment to California, the place and the idea. The early chapters are slow and heavy on genealogy, but in characteristic Didion style each part is pulled tight by the end.

The amount of detail Ferrante brings to her explorations of the narrator's mind is outstanding. In some ways it reads as a more engaging Proust. This book made me want to excavate my own mind more clearly and thoroughly, and the bond between the characters compels me to read the rest of the series.

This book was unexpectedly compelling and heartbreaking. I identified so strongly with Maria Wyeth despite us having very little in common, which is, I think, a testament to Didion's extraordinary narrative skills.