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Obviousstate

Obviousstate

Joined May 2016

Literary goods & gifts | www.obviousstate.com
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Why Read the Classics? by Italo Calvino
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Obviousstate
Why Read the Classics? | Italo Calvino
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"All that can be done is for each one of us to invent our own ideal library of our classics."

merelybookish ❤❤❤❤ 8y
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Obviousstate
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"There are days when solitude… is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom” - Colette.

flip58 Love this quote 8y
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Obviousstate
Common Sense | Thomas Paine
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“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.” - Thomas Paine. I picked up four books from the @penguinbooks “Great Ideas” series at The Abbey Bookshop in Paris last week. I couldn‘t wait to crack the spine on “Common Sense” after discussing it with the owner of the shop.

MrBook Love this 😊👍🏻! 8y
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Obviousstate
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"Here, indeed, was a formidable sentence--one that was on intimate terms with the comma, and that held the period in healthy disregard." ?

Brandilarsen I just read that paragraph this evening too! 8y
Obviousstate @Brandilarsen It's so great! I finished the book recently, but I had underlined this section. Hysterical!' 8y
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Obviousstate
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“He‘d been sent out to pick firewood from the forest, sticks and timbers wrenched loose in the storm. Light met him as he stepped outside, the living day met him with its details, the scuffling blackbird that had its nest in their apple tree.”

ultrabookgeek Kitty Toes!!! 😻 8y
rubyslippersreads Such adorable paws! 😺❤️ 8y
catpdx Adorable ❤ 8y
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WanderingBookaneer Amazing picture! 8y
QueenAnne 😍😍adorable! 😍😍 8y
Emory Such cute little feet! 😻 8y
Simona Very beautiful picture‼️❤️💯😻 8y
Faibka Love that picture!! 😸😸 8y
Petitesmerveilles What a great photo 8y
ephemeralwaltz I am in love with your pintures on Instagram, I'm so glad you're on Litsy! 8y
95 likes3 stack adds10 comments
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Obviousstate

“He‘d been sent out to pick firewood from the forest, sticks and timbers wrenched loose in the storm. Light met him as he stepped outside, the living day met him with its details, the scuffling blackbird that had its nest in their apple tree.”

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Obviousstate
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Mysteries and pastries for the win. Crime and cake are 👌🏻

LeahBergen Yes! 8y
BibliophileMomma I love Agatha Christie novels! 8y
JanJan I love those editions of Agatha Christie so beautiful! 8y
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[DELETED] 2232195534 Oh yes indeed!!! 8y
Obviousstate @Janroddy Agree! Gorgeous! 8y
LukewarmSiren I could not get into Orient. That Was Then, This Is Now is still my favorite Christie! 8y
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Obviousstate
Everything and Nothing | Jorge Luis Borges, Donald A. Yates
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Works of fiction contain a single plot, with all its imaginable permutations. Those of a philosophical nature invariably include both the thesis and the antithesis, the rigorous pro and con of a doctrine. A book which does not contain its counterbook is considered incomplete.”

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Obviousstate
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Process of illumination. Enjoying this so far.

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Obviousstate
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"FOR the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not -- and very surely do I not dream." Poe - The master of unreliable narrators!

Books_Wine_Repeat Great pic! 8y
britt_brooke Lovely picture! 8y
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Obviousstate
Palace of Books | Roger Grenier
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"Here is a 'palace of books' where Proust, Flaubert, Nabokov, Flannery O'Connor, Chekhov, Baudelaire and Kafka wander happily alongside the author's own friends and colleagues--Romain Gary, Jean-Paul Sartre, Claude Roy--and his mentor, Albert Camus."

MrBook Nice pic! 8y
Obviousstate @MrBook Thank you! 8y
KimM Is that lavender and cucumber water? 8y
Obviousstate @KimM It's Prosecco with thyme and plum. 😉 8y
Gissy Looks so refresh those beverages! 8y
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Obviousstate
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We had coffee with the Penguin Classics team last week, and they treated us to a copy of the much anticipated “Classic Penguin Cover to Cover.” Admission: We haven‘t been able to put this beauty down since, and the rest of our summer reading pile looks resentful. Highly recommend!

HotCocoaReads This is lovely! 8y
Obviousstate @HotCocoaReads It's beautiful! We can't stop leafing through it. 8y
natshell What a treasure! 8y
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Obviousstate
The Portable Nietzsche | Friedrich Nietzsche
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“It is the stillest words that bring on the storm. Thoughts that come on doves‘ feet guide the world.”

MrBook Great quote and picture! 8y
Obviousstate @MrBook Thank you! 8y
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Obviousstate
Montauk | Max Frisch
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“That‘s all our job amounts to! The main thing is to stand up to the light, to joy in the knowledge that I shall be extinguished in the light over gorse, asphalt, and sea, to stand up to time, or rather to eternity in the instant.”

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Obviousstate
The Sheltering Sky | Paul Bowles
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How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”

451Degrees Gorgeous picture!☺️ 8y
Donna_sBookMinute Yes, the layout is very nice. 8y
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Obviousstate
Sketchy, Doubtful, Incomplete Jottings | Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
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I read a lot of crappy reviews about this, but... cmon. Who doesn't want to read sketchy (double meaning in that!) Goethe? I love that it's a disjointed, ramble-y smattering of ideas. Some gems in here. Side note: about those Blackwing pencils...

LitLogophile Don't know about the book, but those tools are beautiful ✒️ 8y
Classic_Wirginia I need that book! I read Faust and I loved it, I want to name my future dog Mephistopheles. 8y
Louise Good ol' Goethe! 8y
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Obviousstate @lostlogophile They really are! We got them from CW Pencil - a really cool shop on the lower east side. 8y
Haweller Isn't that the beauty in books? You get to pick which book you like. And, I Need to try this one. 8y
SusanInTiburon The Little Penguin Classics are irresistible. 8y
Heather_Reads I loved this so much - I've got post-it flags hanging out of it all over the place! 8y
Elisa Oh I love the Little Penguin Classics! So affordable and lots of uncommon titles, like catnip for bookworms 😄 8y
ChinaEuroLatina Of course you read crappy comments from crappy minds who would never get real deep writers! 8y
Laiane I bought the boxed set after seeing the photo and reading the comments. Thank you! 8y
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Obviousstate
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“If each poet, musician, dancer, florist and pastry chef had been told, early in their lives, that it was pretentious for them to take an interest in literature, music, theater, gardening or cooking... then millions of imaginations and minds would have been stunted…"

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Obviousstate
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"stayed on the market
youth of my twenties
fainted in offices
wept on typewriters” - Allen Ginsberg, My Alba

Happy birthday to one of the badass-iest of beats.

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Obviousstate
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"You know, like it or not, it's horrible to be dying at twenty-five years of age without ever having loved someone--and that's what was driving her crazy, and why, out of desperation she had chosen me." - Turgenev, District Doctor

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Obviousstate
The Great Gatsby | Francis Scott Fitzgerald
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"Tom came back, preceding four gin rickeys that clicked full of ice. Gatsby took up his drink. 'They certainly look cool,' he said, with visible tension. We drank in long, greedy swallows.” ?

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Obviousstate
The Master and Margarita | Mikhail Bulgakov
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Pickpick

Cold ice cream. HOT book cover. Re-reading this beloved, subversive satire because I could not resist this cover. Want to read a wild, Russian romp? Pick up a copy.

BookishFeminist Cover swoon 😍 9y
Bookgirl Reading this right now for the first time 9y
Eugeniavb Fantastic book 9y
lidianams This cover is awesome!!! 9y
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Obviousstate
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“A towel, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have." Happy towel day all!

Christy I can't believe I haven't read this book yet! 9y
Obviousstate @Christy I didn't read it until after college. 😉 9y
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Obviousstate
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I picked up “The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty” at Three Lives in the West Village a few days ago after a recommendation from the staff. Part meditation on beauty, part murder mystery? Surrealist literary farce? I‘m in.

BookishFeminist This sounds interesting! 9y
krpotts I'm in love with the cover 😍 9y
Obviousstate @BookishFeminist It's good so far! 9y
Obviousstate @krpotts So lovely. 9y
Ejmellow I just finished and loved ever word! 8y
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Obviousstate
The Fox and the Star | Coralie Bickford-Smith
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“He asked Star to shine through the clouds so he could dance to the rain‘s tapping beat. All of Fox‘s happiness was bound to the flickering light of the star. And so it had always been.” Coralie Bickford-Smith's illustrations are magical and the prose is delightful. A gorgeous book.

eoanthoughts I wanna read this one so much!! 9y
Obviousstate @BookishMoments It's so wonderful! We bought it for our nieces and are keeping it for ourselves. 😉 9y
LostNCheeseland This cover !!! 8y
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Obviousstate
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"Gazing up into the darkness, I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger."

vulpes_pulchella Oh my gosh. Araby is one of my favorite stories; I love this photo. 8y
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Obviousstate
Morte | Robert Repino
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In a world ruled by ants, only a house cat can save humans from their demise. Just started this and already sucked in to the crazy. The good kind of crazy.

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Obviousstate
Figure in the Carpet | Henry James
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“It stretches, this little trick of mine, from book to book, and everything else, comparatively, plays over the surface of it.” I‘m enjoying this literary chess game. If you‘ve ever searched for meaning in an author‘s work, this may cause you to consider whether you‘ve been played.

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Obviousstate
Hot Dudes Reading | Hot Dudes Reading
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"All dressed up on the L? This enticing entrepreneur must have a big pitch today. He‘s so adorable that I‘d by whatever he‘s selling. Orange-scented toilet paper? Have to have it. Battery-powered scissors? Completely reasonable. The purrfect cat tower? I‘ll take two." New edition to the coffee table

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Obviousstate
Letters to Milena | Franz Kafka
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Just a few pages in, but here's a great excerpt from one of the first letters dated April 1920. "It occurs to me that I really can‘t remember your face in any precise detail. Only the way you walked away through the tables in the cafe, your figure, your dress, that I still see.”

Berenices And what a tumultuous relationship it was! Love your photo. 7y
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Obviousstate
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“To remain silent is to give the impression that one has no opinions, that one wants nothing, and in certain cases it really amounts to wanting nothing.” - Albert Camus. Just when you‘re on the verge of taking a break from this demanding read, a sentence reaches out and gut-punches you.

todd Great post! 9y
Obviousstate @todd thanks! 9y
Athena-Fei I own that exact edition! I adore the writings of Camus, particularly his essays. In his fiction, he succeeds in his goal to give pictures to his philosophy, but I feel that it is in his essays that he truly shines. 8y
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Obviousstate
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“It is a most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, book spread before you, and commune with someone from the past whom you have never met.” - Yoshida Kenko. Well, it‘s nice to meet you, Mr. Kenko

BellaBookNook I've never heard of this but it sounds great! Adding to my ever growing list. 9y
callunakeep @DiruVamp ... Thought of you! 9y
Obviousstate @BellaBookNook We hadn't either. It was included in the boxed set of Little Black Penguin Classics. A delightful surprise! 9y
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Bevie Sounds so interesting. Thanks for posting such a great quote. 9y
TheBookbabeblog84 This has a lovely title 9y
mariadp What an interesting title 9y
Thirsty12 Makes me want to read it 9y
TheMarlene Love the picture. 9y
CherylC Intriguing. This will be my first Litsy title to add to my "to read" list! 9y
frenchbreakfast Excellent composition in this photo. I love it! 9y
Donna_sBookMinute Yes, I agree that the composition of the photo is great. I also love the quote. 9y
sdhorbelt I've added several books from Litsy to my TBR stack this morning, but this is the one I'm most excited about so far. 8y
Obviousstate @sdhorbelt It's such a great read! Enjoy it. 8y
Obviousstate @Bevie You are welcome! 8y
Obviousstate @CherylC Nice! Hope you like it! 8y
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Obviousstate
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"I don't need to be showered in chocolates and fine wine, / A text with proper grammar would do me just fine.”

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