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The couple were similarly impossible. Both were selfish, cold with fiery tempers, though she had none of his cruelty and duplicity. Perhaps they were too similar to be happy. All the witnesses agree that life with Stalin was “not easy—it
...more
“Of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest.”
―
―
“Death might appear to destroy the meaning in our lives, but in fact it is the very source of our creativity. As Kafka said, “The meaning of life is that it ends.” Death is the engine that keeps us running, giving us the motivation to achieve, learn, love, and create.”
― Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
― Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory
“Why don’t you turn on the dawnzer?” Ramona asked, proud of her new word.
Beezus looked up from her book. “What are you talking about?” she asked Ramona.
“What’s a dawnzer?”
Ramona was scornful. “Silly. Everybody knows what a dawnzer is.”
“I don’t,” said Mr. Quimby, who had been reading the evening paper. “What is a dawnzer?”
“A lamp,” said Ramona. “It gives a lee light. We sing about it every morning in kindergarten.”
A puzzled silence fell over the room until Beezus suddenly shouted with laughter.
“She-she means—” she gasped, “The Star-Spangled B-banner!” Her laughter dwindled to giggles. “She means the dawn’s early light.”
― Ramona the Pest
Beezus looked up from her book. “What are you talking about?” she asked Ramona.
“What’s a dawnzer?”
Ramona was scornful. “Silly. Everybody knows what a dawnzer is.”
“I don’t,” said Mr. Quimby, who had been reading the evening paper. “What is a dawnzer?”
“A lamp,” said Ramona. “It gives a lee light. We sing about it every morning in kindergarten.”
A puzzled silence fell over the room until Beezus suddenly shouted with laughter.
“She-she means—” she gasped, “The Star-Spangled B-banner!” Her laughter dwindled to giggles. “She means the dawn’s early light.”
― Ramona the Pest
“Pepper’s given first names were Pippin Galadriel Moonchild. She had been given them in a naming ceremony in a muddy valley field that contained three sick sheep and a number of leaky polythene teepees. Her mother had chosen the Welsh valley of Pant-y-Gyrdl as the ideal site to Return to Nature. (Six months later, sick of the rain, the mosquitoes, the men, the tent-trampling sheep who ate first the whole commune’s marijuana crop and then its antique minibus, and by now beginning to glimpse why almost the entire drive of human history has been an attempt to get as far away from Nature as possible, Pepper’s mother returned to Pepper’s surprised grandparents in Tadfield, bought a bra, and enrolled in a sociology course with a deep sigh of relief.)”
― Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
― Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
“Horror is a woman’s genre, and it has been all the way back to the oldest horror novel still widely read today: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, daughter of pioneering feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft. Ann Radcliffe’s gothic novels (The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Italian) made her the highest-paid writer of the late eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century, Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Charlotte Riddell were book-writing machines, turning out sensation novels and ghost stories by the pound. Edith Wharton wrote ghost stories before becoming a novelist of manners, and Vernon Lee (real name Violet Paget) wrote elegant tales of the uncanny that rival anything by Henry James. Three of Daphne du Maurier’s stories became Hitchcock films (Jamaica Inn, Rebecca, The Birds), and Shirley Jackson’s singular horror novel The Haunting of Hill House made her one of the highest-regarded American writers of the twentieth century.”
― Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction
― Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction
Shirin’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Shirin’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
128 books
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1,300 books
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5,165 books
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4,997 friends
3,310 books
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656 books
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35 friends
17,094 books
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2,037 friends
8,512 books
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533 friends
4,168 books
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