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All seems quiet now, but it is not a natural silence. It is the sound of someone trying not to make a sound,
“I can’t imagine all men love their women the way I love Anne. If they did, the streets would be empty, and the fields would grow fallow. Industry would rumble to a halt and markets would tumble as men bowed at the feet of their wives, unable to need or notice anything but her. If all men loved their wives the way I love Anne, we would be a useless lot. Or maybe the world would know peace. Maybe the wars would end, and the strife would cease as we centred our lives on loving and being loved.”
― What the Wind Knows
― What the Wind Knows
“Tom wrote secret poetry, and in those days it was only sensible to keep it secret. The poets were pale emasculates, and Western men held them in contempt. Poetry was a symptom of weakness, of degeneracy and decay. To read it was to court catcalls. To write it was to be suspected and ostracized. Poetry was a secret vice, and properly so. No one knows whether Tom’s poetry was any good or not, for he showed it to only one person, and before he died he burned every word. From the ashes in the stove there must have been a great deal of it.”
― East of Eden by John Steinbeck: A Timeless Tale of Family, Free Will, and the Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil
― East of Eden by John Steinbeck: A Timeless Tale of Family, Free Will, and the Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil
“The Inquisitors’ attack on her was rather like a pile of firewood condemning a life-giving fire in winter for not being unburned wood.”
― Sun House
― Sun House
“Whatever the past may have handed on to us, it is up to each one of us to chisel our present out of the shapeless block of the future.”
― Trust
― Trust
“Interestingly, Jesus’s last supper was the Jewish Passover meal, which according to the Gospel accounts Jesus shared with his disciples just before his crucifixion. In Jewish tradition, the whole purpose of the Passover meal is to create and reenact artificial memories. Every year Jewish families sit together on the eve of Passover to eat and reminisce about “their” exodus from Egypt. They are supposed not only to tell the story of how the descendants of Jacob escaped slavery in Egypt but to remember how they personally suffered at the hands of the Egyptians, how they personally saw the sea part, and how they personally received the Ten Commandments from Jehovah at Mount Sinai.”
― Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
― Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
Joel’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Joel’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
2,495 books
|
2,165 friends
3,001 books
|
5,000 friends
1,512 books
|
127 friends
2,661 books
|
394 friends
4,406 books
|
493 friends
1,437 books
|
157 friends
3,472 books
|
2,781 friends
1,020 books
|
279 friends
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Joel
Lists liked by Joel
