Sign in with Facebook
to-read
(696)
currently-reading (0)
read (387)
fantasy (302)
non-fiction (278)
lgbt (105)
history (88)
contemporary (87)
currently-reading (0)
read (387)
fantasy (302)
non-fiction (278)
lgbt (105)
history (88)
contemporary (87)
science-fiction
(75)
historical-fiction (57)
short-stories (57)
classics (52)
memoir (30)
mystery (29)
graphic-novels (26)
science (16)
historical-fiction (57)
short-stories (57)
classics (52)
memoir (30)
mystery (29)
graphic-novels (26)
science (16)
“April 27. Incapable of living with people, of speaking. Complete immersion in myself, thinking of myself. Apathetic, witless, fearful. I have nothing to say to anyone - never.”
― Diaries, 1910-1923
― Diaries, 1910-1923
“Evening in the garden of the Askanischer Hof. Ate
rice a la Trautmannsdorf and a peach. A man drinking
wine watched my attempts to cut the unripe little peach with my knife. I couldn’t. Stricken with shame under the old man’s eyes, I let the peach go completely and ten times leafed through Die Fliegenden Blatter. I waited to see if he wouldn’t at last turn away. Finally I collected all my strength and in defiance of him bit into the completely juiceless and expensive peach.”
― Diaries, 1910-1923
rice a la Trautmannsdorf and a peach. A man drinking
wine watched my attempts to cut the unripe little peach with my knife. I couldn’t. Stricken with shame under the old man’s eyes, I let the peach go completely and ten times leafed through Die Fliegenden Blatter. I waited to see if he wouldn’t at last turn away. Finally I collected all my strength and in defiance of him bit into the completely juiceless and expensive peach.”
― Diaries, 1910-1923
“My brothers have my measure when it comes to fighting and dancing and thinking and reading books, but none of them is half my equal at lying insensible in the mud.”
― A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
― A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
“The litany of farmhouse pains goes on. Diseases like tuberculosis and bone inflammations were part of the new lifestyle, incubating in cramped rooms that lacked fresh air and spread by agriculturalists’ habit of mingling with livestock. Worse, the actual farmwork ground away the laborers’ joints and contorted their backs. Worst of all, while hunter-gatherers had to work an average of twenty hours per week, farmers toiled for an inhumane forty to sixty hours.”
― Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilization
― Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilization
“Plutarch describes how this system worked in reality:
‘But when the wealthy men began to offer larger rents, and drive the poorer people out, it was enacted by law, that no person whatever should enjoy more than five hundred acres of ground. This act for some time checked the avarice of the richer, and was of great assistance to the poorer people, who retained under it their respective proportions of ground, as they had been formerly rented by them. Afterwards the rich men of the neighborhood contrived to get these lands again into their possession, under other people’s names, and at last would not stick to claim most of them publicly in their own. The poor… were thus deprived of their farms.’
Flushed with righteous zeal, Tiberius Gracchus ran for the office of tribune on a platform of redistributing land to the poor so they could fee themselves. The idea, though riotously popular with the plebs, horrified the plantation owners and their moneyed allies. Gracchus won the election, but… the patricians cried that Gracchus was exploiting those same masses to seize power and declare himself king.
...
On the day that Gracchus’s reforms were due for debate in the Curia Julia, the honorable gentlemen of the Senate arrived in a state of eagerness bordering on cannibal savagery… Again, Plutarch describes the scene:
‘Tiberius [Gracchus] tried to save himself by flight. As he was running, he was stopped by one who caught hold of him by the gown; but he threw it off, and fled in his under-garments only. And stumbling over those who before had been knocked down, as he was endeavoring to get up again, Publius Satureius, a tribune, one of his colleagues, was observed to give him the first fatal stroke, by hitting him upon the head with the foot of a stool. The second blow was claimed, as though it had been a deed to be proud of, by Lucius Rufus. And of the rest there fell above three hundred, killed by clubs and staves only, none by an iron weapon.”
― Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilization
‘But when the wealthy men began to offer larger rents, and drive the poorer people out, it was enacted by law, that no person whatever should enjoy more than five hundred acres of ground. This act for some time checked the avarice of the richer, and was of great assistance to the poorer people, who retained under it their respective proportions of ground, as they had been formerly rented by them. Afterwards the rich men of the neighborhood contrived to get these lands again into their possession, under other people’s names, and at last would not stick to claim most of them publicly in their own. The poor… were thus deprived of their farms.’
Flushed with righteous zeal, Tiberius Gracchus ran for the office of tribune on a platform of redistributing land to the poor so they could fee themselves. The idea, though riotously popular with the plebs, horrified the plantation owners and their moneyed allies. Gracchus won the election, but… the patricians cried that Gracchus was exploiting those same masses to seize power and declare himself king.
...
On the day that Gracchus’s reforms were due for debate in the Curia Julia, the honorable gentlemen of the Senate arrived in a state of eagerness bordering on cannibal savagery… Again, Plutarch describes the scene:
‘Tiberius [Gracchus] tried to save himself by flight. As he was running, he was stopped by one who caught hold of him by the gown; but he threw it off, and fled in his under-garments only. And stumbling over those who before had been knocked down, as he was endeavoring to get up again, Publius Satureius, a tribune, one of his colleagues, was observed to give him the first fatal stroke, by hitting him upon the head with the foot of a stool. The second blow was claimed, as though it had been a deed to be proud of, by Lucius Rufus. And of the rest there fell above three hundred, killed by clubs and staves only, none by an iron weapon.”
― Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilization
Holman’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Holman’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
495 books
|
205 friends
2,146 books
|
336 friends
193 books
|
6 friends
217 books
|
2 friends
1,654 books
|
117 friends
363 books
|
30 friends
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Holman
Lists liked by Holman
