166 books
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84 voters
“Even the apparently unreliable narrator is more often than not reliably unreliable. Think of Kazuo Ishiguro’s butler in The Remains of the Day, or of Bertie Wooster, or even of Humbert Humbert. We know that the narrator is being unreliable because the author is alerting us, through reliable manipulation, to that narrator’s unreliability. A process of authorial flagging is going on; the novel teaches us how to read its narrator. Unreliably”
― How Fiction Works
― How Fiction Works
“During his first year in office, Congress did just that, passing legislation that changed the formulas governing eligibility and payouts for certain means-tested entitlements.7 These changes led to a roughly 2 percent increase in the poverty rate, the brunt of which was borne by African Americans.”
― Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
― Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
“As the historian David Krugler explains, “African Americans were not so much rioting as fighting back, counterattacking, repelling violence; above all, resisting.”79”
― Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
― Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
“Keeping blacks subjugated required that they be unarmed. Alabama’s law was typical: “Any freedman, mulatto, or free person of color in this state” was forbidden “to own fire-arms, or carry about his person a pistol or other deadly weapon.”76 Blacks caught breaking the law were subject to incarceration—which, in the early twentieth century, often meant being sold into debt servitude and forced to work in conditions that approximated slavery. According to Douglas Blackmon, “In an era when great numbers of southern men carried sidearms, the crime of carrying a concealed weapon—enforced almost solely against black men—would by the turn of the century become one of the most consistent instruments of black incarceration.”77”
― Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
― Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
“During the first, in 1857, he forced himself to witness a public execution in Paris, and the sight shook him so deeply that he vowed he would never again serve any government.”
― War and Peace
― War and Peace
The Mookse and the Gripes
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Forum for spirited and convivial discussion of fiction from around the world, with particular though not exclusive focus on 20th and 21st century fict ...more
Literary Exploration
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Want to explore different genres? Each month we pick a different Literary book, to read and discuss. Books are picked by members via a poll.
The Friendly Book Cave 2020
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Welcome to The Friendly Book Cave. The Friendly Book Cave is becoming better than ever now. we are levelling up higher than ever. It is still thrivin ...more
Jin’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Jin’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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