Alena

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Beautyland
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by Marie-Helene Bertino (Goodreads Author)
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The Sea Hides Its...
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by Megan Bontrager (Goodreads Author)
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The Sparrow
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by Mary Doria Russell (Goodreads Author)
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See all 29 books that Alena is reading…
Book cover for The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II
There have been a thousand wars—small and big, known and unknown. And still more has been written about them. But…it was men writing about men—that much was clear at once. Everything we know about war we know with “a man’s voice.” We are ...more
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Madeline Miller
“I wake sometimes in the dark terrified by my life's precariousness, its thready breath. Beside me, my husband's pulse beats at his throat; in their beds, my children's skin shows every faintest scratch. A breeze would blow them over, and the world is filled with more than breezes: diseases and disasters, monsters and pain in a thousand variations. I do not forget either my father and his kind hanging over us, bright and sharp as swords, aimed at our tearing flesh. If they do not fall on us in spite and malice, then they will fall by accident or whim. My breath fights in my throat. How can I live on beneath such a burden of doom? I rise then and go to my herbs. I create something, I transform something. My witchcraft is as strong as ever, stronger. This too is good fortune. How many have such power and leisure and defense as I do? Telemachus comes from our bed to find me. He sits with me in the greensmelling darkness, holding my hand. Our faces are both lined now, marked with our years. Circe, he says, it will be all right. It is not the saying of an oracle or a prophet. They are words you might speak to a child. I have heard him say them to our daughters, when he rocked them back to sleep from a nightmare, when he dressed their small cuts, soothed whatever stung. His skin is familiar as my own beneath my fingers. I listen to his breath, warm upon the night air, and somehow I am comforted. He does not mean it does not hurt. He does not mean we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive.”
Madeline Miller, Circe

Madeline Miller
“He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none.”
Madeline Miller, Circe

Josh Rountree
“The crowd cheered louder. Blood pounded hard in my head, began to drown out everything else. The performers continued to trade fire, and I wondered at how clinical the whole thing felt. A sanitized version of the violence that had plagued the prairie ever since the European settlers decided to press their way West. This was a performance for romantics, who read about such struggles in dime novels and eastern newspapers. They clapped and laughed and traded jabs with one another about how many Indians they’d have killed if just given the chance and a well-oiled long rifle. My stomach boiled and my heart hurt. None of these people had felt someone’s hot blood staining their fine clothes. None of them had smelled death up close. They cheered as the occasional Indian tumbled from his horse, felled by Frank’s imaginary bullets, but there was no question the victims would all get back up again. Limbs still attached. Chest cavities untroubled by flattened chunks of lead. It was a celebration of death, and I hated it.”
Josh Rountree, The Unkillable Frank Lightning

Douglas Adams
“In the beginning the Universe was created.
This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.”
Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Chuck Wendig
“C’mon, please.” Lore shook her head. “He always was what he was, and he told us from the beginning. When someone tells you who they are, believe them. Isn’t that the saying? You knew who he was and who you were voting for. You probably voted for him the other times, too, you just won’t say it out loud. You took the hat off, oooh, but I bet you still own it. If I squint, I can still see it on your head.” She rolled her eyes. “Half of America put the hat on and took the mask off and that was that, and that’s where we’re at now.”
Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods

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