167 books
—
133 voters
Discover new books on Goodreads
Meet your next favorite book
Mike
https://www.goodreads.com/mikebreen
If our last decade or two of collapsing assumptions has been a period of unusual discomfort, it is reassuring to know that the human species has lived through worse before. Curiously, the “phenomenal parallels” have been applied by another
...more
this is why I had to read this again
“Blair thought, That’s how the empire will end, one-sided and rash, in a botched suicide, leaving India wrecked, Burma blinded.”
― Burma Sahib
― Burma Sahib
“The trick was to pick out what was important, and never, ever to forget that the map was not the territory.”
― The Vor Game
― The Vor Game
“was Miss Crane’s first experience of social snobbery abroad, which was never the same as snobbery at home because it was complicated by the demands, sometimes conflicting, of white solidarity and white supremacy.”
― The Jewel in the Crown
― The Jewel in the Crown
“They were just the sort of people who started revolutions but could not finish them, their idealism betrayed by their incompetence.”
― Cetaganda
― Cetaganda
“History isn’t a narrative. There’s nothing tidy about it. There’s nothing clear about its margins. It’s an infiltrated, interlocking mess, and there are other systers whose brains are much more adapted to dealing with the fact that reality is not a story than humans are. Humans make a lot of terrible mistakes because we rely so heavily on narrative to understand the world. It allows our brains to be hacked by convincing fairy tales, to be hijacked by memes whether they have any objective reality or not. We probably needed rightminding more than most species just to remind us that stories are not the truth, even when they feel like the truth. Even when they suit all our biases and reinforce all our prejudices.”
― The Folded Sky
― The Folded Sky
Peculiar Book Club
— 208 members
— last activity Oct 12, 2026 05:50AM
The Peculiar Book Club is the esteemed home of the quirky, quizzical, curious, and bizarre. Join host Dr. Brandy Schillace for events twice a month vi ...more
Horror Aficionados
— 31125 members
— last activity 2 minutes ago
If you love horror literature, movies, and culture, you're in the right place. Whether it's vampires, werewolves, zombies, serial killers, plagues, or ...more
Mike’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Mike’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
10,299 books
|
1,281 friends
29,507 books
|
572 friends
43,711 books
|
982 friends
2,205 books
|
345 friends
4,305 books
|
64 friends
7,646 books
|
774 friends
1,605 books
|
118 friends
133 books
|
59 friends
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Mike
Lists liked by Mike