Ryan Mandelbaum

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Ryan’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (598)
currently-reading‎ (0)
read‎ (765)

did-not-finish‎ (0)
to-read-2025‎ (69)
to-read-2024‎ (65)

to-read-2026‎ (41)
40k‎ (40)
need-physical-copy‎ (15)

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“I stood on the cedar deck for quite a spell, eye fuckin' the night sky, trying to stare down the stars. Blood had crusted on my neck, back, in my hair, down the legs of my jeans, to where i was as spattered as a thumbless beef packer. I kept on with my close study of the higher reaches, fantasizing that a comet was due to streak by trailing a message only for me, spelled out clearly and printed huge. Some epigram from far away out there that'd clue me in on how to feel after killing a man”
― Daniel Woodrell

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“I never knew anyone who fucked up their life good who didn't think they were special. The holes they dug themselves into were exactly the shape of their dreams”
― Benjamin Whitmer, Pike

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“They sold records out of the trunk of the Model A. They sold them with no trouble at all, folks digging up change out of their purses so worn the faces denominating it looked spectral, mere ghosts of themselves. They sold them to folks who did not even own phonographs, who had no prospects of owning one, folks who seemed to regard the records as talismans. Who handled them reverently and turned them to the light and studied the spiraling grooves as if they'd find there some physical evidence of their own provisional existence, as if their very lives were somehow encoded there”
― William Gay, Provinces of Night

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“Bloodworth was not fooled, he had these folks' number, he'd been reading their mail walking a lifetime in their shoes. Beyond the mothriddled light their faces were rapt and transfixed, he sang about death as if it was the only kept promise out of all life's false starts and switchbacks, all there was at the end of the dusty road, his voice told them about calm and quiet and eternal rest. No landlord, no cotton to chop, no ticket at the company store growing like a cancer. Just time itself frozen like leaves in winter ice and nothing in the round world to worry about or dread.”
― William Gay, Provinces of Night

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“The girl noticed her eyes. They seemed kind to her, despite the woman's rough look. Out of nowhere, she wanted the woman to hold her. It had been so long since she had smelled a woman's skin that even a dirty woman's embrace would have been welcome. She was still disturbed by the sight of the dead young nuns near the hospital and she wanted a woman to hold her and tell her that the whole world didn't yet belong to Death, masculine Death with his hourglass and his holes for eyes. Death with his bony arms that only embraced to take you away, like a lamb from the market. Like the pig on La Bucherie. How did Heaven come into all of this? Heaven was life, not death. Heaven was a woman holding your head in the crook of her arm and looking down at you. Heaven was a warm hand on your cheek and the smell of soup with garlic on the fire.
How could people enjoy anything in heaven with their noses rotted off and their ears full of mud and worms, and no cheeks, and no hands to lay on cheeks?”
― Christopher Buehlman, Between Two Fires

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