“Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, and they might even try, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: you are irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You're frightened, and you're frightening, and you're "not at all like yourself but will be soon," but you know you won't.”
― An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
― An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
“Moods are such an essential part of the substance of life, of one's notion of oneself, that even psychotic extremes in mood and behavior somehow can be seen as temporary, even understandable, reactions to what life has dealt.”
― An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
― An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
“Somehow, like so many people who get depressed, we felt our depressions were more complicated and existentially based than they actually were.”
― An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
― An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
“Depression is awful beyond words or sounds or images...it bleeds relationships through suspicion, lack of confidence and self-respect, the inability to enjoy life, to walk or talk or think normally, the exhaustion, the night terrors, the day terrors. There is nothing good to be said for it except that it gives you the experience of how it must be to be old, to be old and sick, to be dying; to be slow of mind; to be lacking in grace, polish and coordination; to be ugly; to have no belief in the possibilities of life, the pleasures of sex, the exquisiteness of music or the ability to make yourself and others laugh.”
― An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
― An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
Read a book from each country
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— last activity Mar 02, 2026 11:42PM
I thought this would be a good place to collect recommendations for books from various countries. I don't have a formal goal to read a book from each ...more
Literary Fiction by People of Color
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— last activity Apr 23, 2026 11:32AM
This can include genre fiction that is literary (e.g. speculative fiction, historical fiction, etc.), as long as it's written by a person of color (Af ...more
Sarah’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Sarah’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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