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332 reviews
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David Piwinski

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https://www.goodreads.com/daveski

David’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (73)
currently-reading‎ (0)
read‎ (415)

did-not-finish‎ (0)
kindle‎ (102)
52-in-2010‎ (60)

non-fiction‎ (29)
favorites‎ (25)
to-read-stack‎ (6)

unfinished‎ (2)
poetry‎ (0)

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David’s Quotes

“No one pays attention to these killings, but the secret of the world is hidden in them.”
― Roberto Bolaño

13 likes

“Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow. ”
― Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red

tags: books, insight, sorrow

388 likes

“He chose The Metamorphosis over The Trial, he chose Bartleby over Moby-Dick, he chose A Simple Heart over Bouvard and Pecuchet, and A Christmas Carol over A Tale of Two Cities or The Pickwick Papers. What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.”
― Roberto Bolaño, 2666

tags: 227, literature, reading, writing

116 likes

“He was an atheist and it had been years since he read a book, despite the fact that he had amassed a more than decent library of works in his specialty, as well as volumes of philosophy and Mexican history and a novel or two. Sometimes he thought it was precisely because he was an atheist that he didn't read anymore. Not reading, it might be said, was the highest expression of atheism or at least of atheism as he conceived of it. If you don't believe in God, how do you believe in a fucking book? he asked himself.”
― Roberto Bolaño, 2666

24 likes

“For a while, Criticism travels side by side with the Work, then Criticism vanishes and it's the Readers who keep pace. The journey may be long or short. Then the Readers die one by one and the Work continues on alone, although a new Criticism and new Readers gradually fall into step with it along its path. Then Criticism dies again and the Readers die again and the Work passes over a trail of bones on its journey toward solitude. To come near the work, to sail in her wake, is a sign of certain death, but new Criticism and new Readers approach her tirelessly and relentlessly and are devoured by time and speed. Finally the Work journeys irremediably alone in the Great Vastness. And one day the Work dies, as all things must die and come to an end: the Sun and the Earth and the Solar System and the Galaxy and the farthest reaches of man's memory. Everything that begins as comedy ends in tragedy.”
― Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives

tags: bolano, book-reviews, inaki-echevarne, literary-criticism, savage-detectives, the-written-word

52 likes

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