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113 books
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268 voters
Mary said:
"
Listened to the Maggie Gyllenhaal audiobook, she’s wonderful. I would happily listen to her read her grocery list.This was my first Tolstoy and boy, I really get it. He’s an absolute master of character - each is both specific and archetypal, fully f ...more "
I could have knelt, put my hands together and directed trembling prayers and lamentations to God, Our Father, but I was living in the wrong age, for when I looked up toward the sky all I saw was a vast and empty space. And when I looked
...more
“Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind, and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”
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“...the darkness does not lift but becomes yet heavier as I think how little we can hold in mind, how everything is constantly lapsing into oblivion with every extinguished life, how the world is, as it were, draining itself, in that the history of countless places and objects which themselves have no power or memory is never heard, never described or passed on.”
― Austerlitz
― Austerlitz
“Next she lost her belief in the sincerity of those about her. She secretly refused to believe that anyone (herself excepted) loved anyone. All families lived in a wasteful atmosphere of custom and kissed one another with secret indifference. She saw that the people of this world moved about in an armour of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires.”
― The Bridge of San Luis Rey
― The Bridge of San Luis Rey
“It is only by a great effort that we rouse ourselves to act, to fight, to struggle, to be heard above the wind, to crush flowers as we walk.”
― The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
― The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
“Of course my ex didn’t walk me home. Instead I wandered, drunk, from Main Street down to the railroad tracks, lay down there and listened to the quiet world. Smoked a cigarette on my back, feeling a part of the ground, one of night’s dark and lost creatures.
For as long as I can remember, this has been one of my favorite feelings. To be alone in public, wandering at night, or lying close to the earth, anonymous, invisible, floating. To be “a man of the crowd,” or, conversely, alone with Nature or your God. To make your claim on public space even as you feel yourself disappearing into its largesse, into sublimity. To practice for death by feeling completely empty, but somehow still alive.
It’s a sensation that people have tried, in various times and places, to keep women from feeling.”
― The Red Parts
For as long as I can remember, this has been one of my favorite feelings. To be alone in public, wandering at night, or lying close to the earth, anonymous, invisible, floating. To be “a man of the crowd,” or, conversely, alone with Nature or your God. To make your claim on public space even as you feel yourself disappearing into its largesse, into sublimity. To practice for death by feeling completely empty, but somehow still alive.
It’s a sensation that people have tried, in various times and places, to keep women from feeling.”
― The Red Parts
Mary’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Mary’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
404 books
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138 friends
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1,762 books
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890 books
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617 books
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401 books
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246 friends
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