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“If there was one thing that Alice felt like she'd done wrong, it was being too passive. She hadn't quit working at Belvedere like everyone else had, she hadn't broken up with people when she knew they weren't right for her, she hadn't ever moved anywhere or done anything sur-prising. She was just floating. Like a seahorse.”
― This Time Tomorrow
― This Time Tomorrow
“The problem with adulthood was feeling like everything came with a timer—a dinner date with Sam was at most two hours, with other friends, probably not even as long. There was maybe waiting for a table, there was a night at a bar, there was a party that went late, but even that was just a few hours of actual time spent. Most of Alice’s friendships now felt like they were virtual, like the pen pals of her youth. It was so easy to go years without seeing someone in person, to keep up to date just through the pictures they posted of their dog or their baby or their lunch. There was never this—a day spent floating from one thing to another. This was how Alice imagined marriage, and family—always having someone to float through the day with, someone with whom it didn’t take three emails and six texts and a last-minute reservation change to see one another. Everyone had it when they were kids, but only the truly gifted held on to it in adulthood.”
― This Time Tomorrow
― This Time Tomorrow
“I had come to see language as an almost supernatural force, existing between people, bringing our brains, shielded in centimeter-thick skulls, into communion. A word meant something only between people, and life’s meaning, its virtue, had something to do with the depth of the relationships we form. It was the relational aspect of humans — i.e., “human relationality” — that undergirded meaning. Yet somehow, this process existed in brains and bodies, subject to their own physiologic imperatives, prone to breaking and failing. There must be a way, I thought, that the language of life as experienced — of passion, of hunger, of love — bore some relationship, however convoluted, to the language of neurons, digestive tracts, and heartbeats.”
― When Breath Becomes Air
― When Breath Becomes Air
“To my daughter I will say, when the men come, set yourself on fire.”
― Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth
― Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― The Bell Jar
― The Bell Jar
CHEMMY GALS
— 5 members
— last activity Sep 17, 2023 07:57PM
welcome all. in order to stay a member of the group please follow all instructions carefully. you must read and annotate every page of the book as if ...more
chemmy bears book club
— 5 members
— last activity Aug 08, 2023 06:25PM
chemmy bears (patent pending) will read one book DUE AT THE END OF THE MONTH!!! BOOKS ONLY NO MOVIES KOOPA. and then we will come together to discuss
Ship of Theseus (S. by Dorst & Abrams)
— 77 members
— last activity Aug 25, 2024 06:19AM
A discussion group on the novel, "S." by Doug Dorst and J. J. Abrams. ...more
Abby’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Abby’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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