Liv

https://www.goodreads.com/petiteillusion

Liv’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (1092)
currently-reading‎ (22)
read‎ (361)
on-hold‎ (376)
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french-language-lit‎ (185)
need-to-buy‎ (142)
books-i-own‎ (141)
penguin-classics‎ (84)
art-and-art-history‎ (81)

poetry‎ (73)
japanese-literature‎ (70)
penguin-modern-classics‎ (70)
movie-version‎ (69)
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read-as-soon-as-possible‎ (61)
symbolist-decadent-etc‎ (58)
i-like-big-books-and-i-cannot-lie‎ (57)
spanish-language-lit‎ (53)
better-than-food‎ (50)
archive‎ (49)
les-cent-livres-du-siecle‎ (49)

nyrb-classics‎ (48)
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Liv is Currently Reading

Liv is currently reading

Greek Lessons

by Han Kang

bookshelves: korean-literature, currently-reading

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Feb 07, 2026 11:38PM

Liv is currently reading

Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth

by Hermann Hesse

bookshelves: books-i-own, german-language-lit, friend-recs, friend-recs-2, 1910s, bookshelf-mm, currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

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(page 50 of 142)
— Feb 07, 2026 11:38PM

Feb 06, 2026 07:24PM

Liv is currently reading

Selected Poems

by Marina Tsvetaeva

bookshelves: poetry, russian-literature, penguin-classics, need-to-buy, currently-reading

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progress:

(page 24 of 160)
— Jan 20, 2026 07:01PM

Jan 20, 2026 07:01PM

See all 22 books that Liv is reading…

Liv’s Quotes

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

3779 likes

“A lonely, quiet person has observations and experiences that are at once both more indistinct and more penetrating than those of one more gregarious; his thoughts are weightier, stranger, and never without a tinge of sadness. . . . Loneliness fosters that which is original, daringly and bewilderingly beautiful, poetic. But loneliness also fosters that which is perverse, incongruous, absurd, forbidden.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice

tags: loneliness, loneliness-quotes

120 likes

“Don't mistake my kindness for weakness. I am kind to everyone, but when someone is unkind to me, weak is not what you are going to remember about me.”
― Al Capone

359 likes

“Darling, the composer has stepped into fire.”
― Anne Sexton, Love Poems

8 likes

“My library is an archive of longings.”
― Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

tags: books, library, longing

3466 likes

More of Liv’s quotes…

recent posts
Liv’s Groups

Japanese Literature — 5512 members — last activity Feb 18, 2026 06:25AM
A group for people who enjoy literature written by Japanese authors, the arts, culture, and history of Japan. The poll for Mar/April 2026 is up! Put ...more

Art Lovers — 2509 members — last activity 5 hours, 33 min ago
To reciprocate the appreciation of different artists and discuss their lives and works.

¡ POETRY ! — 22560 members — last activity Feb 16, 2026 08:36PM
No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read it!) Goodreads honors wordsmiths: poets and poetry promoted and prompted here. ~~~ "Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits." -- Carl Sandburg “God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.” —Anne Sexton On Clouds – “…what primitive tastes the ancients must have had if their poets were inspired by those absurd, untidy clumps of mist, idiotically jostling one another about…” —Yevgeny Zamyatin “If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn’t wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.” —Donald Hall “Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.” —Boris Pasternak “Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.” —Charles Simic “Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.” —Gustave Flaubert “Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.” —Allen Ginsberg. ~~~~~ Amy King, Moderator Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the WNBA Award (Women’s National Book Association). Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She serves on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is co-editing with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology, Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She is also co-editing the anthology, Bettering American Poetry 2015, and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College. ...more

Antastesia's bookclub! — 1090 members — last activity Nov 29, 2017 04:09PM
Welcome to 'my' little bookclub! Which I'd rather call our bookclub ! Why? Because I am very very interested in your suggestions, your opinions, your ...more