Discover new books on Goodreads
Meet your next favorite book
Maria
https://www.goodreads.com/mariape
“We typically misunderstand what's wrong about consumerism. It's not that it makes us love material things too much. To be a good consumer, you have to desire to get lots of things, but you must not love any of them too much once you have them. Consumerism needs children who do not stay attached to their toys for very long and learn to expect the next round of presents as soon as possible. When consumerism succeeds, our attachments are shallow, easily broken, so we can move on to the next thing we're supposed to get. Being a good consumer means desiring new things, not cherishing old ones. And the new things you're supposed to desire are not always material things. Spirituality is now a consumerist enterprise, too.”
― Good News for Anxious Christians: 10 Practical Things You Don't Have to Do
― Good News for Anxious Christians: 10 Practical Things You Don't Have to Do
“We know – it has been measured in many experiments – that children with strong impulse control grow to be better adjusted, more dependable, achieve higher grades in school and college and have more success in their careers than others. Success depends on the ability to delay gratification, which is precisely what a consumerist culture undermines. At every stage, the emphasis is on the instant gratification of instinct. In the words of the pop group Queen, “I want it all and I want it now.” A whole culture is being infantilised.”
―
―
“A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.”
― The Book Thief
― The Book Thief
“The marriage of reason and nightmare that dominated the 20th century has given birth to an ever more ambiguous world. Across the communications landscape move the spectres of sinister technologies and the dreams that money can buy. Thermo-nuclear weapons systems and soft-drink commercials coexist in an overlit realm ruled by advertising and pseudo-events, science and pornography. Over our lives preside the great twin leitmotifs of the 20th century – sex and paranoia…In a sense, pornography is the most political form of fiction, dealing with how we use and exploit each other, in the most urgent and ruthless way.”
―
―
“The child tends to be stripped of all social influences but those of the market place, all sense of place, function and class is weakened, the characteristics of region and clan, neighborhood or kindred are attenuated. The individual is denuded of everything but appetities, desires and tastes, wrenched from any context of human obligation or commitment. It is a process of mutilation; and once this has been achieved, we are offered the consolation of reconstituting the abbreviated humanity out of the things and the goods around us, and the fantasies and vapors which they emit. A culture becomes the main determinant upon morality, beliefs and purposes, usurping more and more territory that formerly belonged to parents, teachers, community, priests and politics alike.”
― What Went Wrong?: Working people and the ideals of the labour movement
― What Went Wrong?: Working people and the ideals of the labour movement
Maria’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Maria’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
60 books
|
57 friends
932 books
|
34 friends
1,561 books
|
111 friends
0 books
|
14 friends
1 book
|
92 friends
1 book
|
21 friends
1 book
|
35 friends
1 book
|
7 friends
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Maria
Lists liked by Maria