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Stephen Rowland

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Stephen’s Bookshelves

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Stephen is Currently Reading

Stephen Rowland is currently reading

The Book of Disquiet

by Fernando Pessoa

bookshelves: currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in April 2020

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Stephen Rowland said: " Absolutely essential for all profoundly unhappy thinking people. I will be quoting Pessoa to the end of my days, I'm sure of it. ...more "

progress:

(page 303 of 544)
— Apr 12, 2020 12:09AM

Apr 13, 2020 03:31PM · see review

Stephen Rowland is currently reading

The MANIAC

by Benjamín Labatut

bookshelves: currently-reading

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progress:

(page 109 of 354)
— Jan 16, 2026 11:57AM

Jan 16, 2026 11:55AM

Stephen Rowland is currently reading

The Map and the Territory

by Michel Houellebecq

bookshelves: currently-reading

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progress:

(page 60 of 269)
— Jan 16, 2026 11:57AM

Jan 16, 2026 11:30AM

See all 14 books that Stephen is reading…

“When I look at small things, I think I shall go on living: drops of rain, leather gloves shrunk by being wet...When I look at something too big, I want to die: the Diet Building, or a map of the world...”
― Kobo Abe, The Box Man

150 likes

“The multiplication of our kind borders on the obscene; the duty to love them, on the preposterous.”
― Emil Cioran

tags: misanthropy, reproduction

169 likes

“Nothing is more natural than mutual misunderstanding; the contrary is always surprising. I believe that one never agrees on anything except by mistake, and that all harmony among human beings is the happy fruit of an error.”
― Paul Valery, The Art of Poetry

tags: life, poetry

96 likes

“The most frightening thing in the world is to discover the abnormal in that which is closest to us.”
― Kobo Abe

118 likes

“Latent in every man is a venom of amazing bitterness, a black resentment; something that curses and loathes life, a feeling of being trapped, of having trusted and been fooled, of being helpless prey to impotent rage, blind surrender, the victim of a savage, ruthless power that gives and takes away, enlists a man, drops him, promises and betrays, and -crowning injury- inflicts on him the humiliation of feeling sorry for himself.”
― Paul Valéry

49 likes

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