36 books
—
44 voters
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(241)
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currently-reading (10)
read (1424)
new-zealand (154)
waiting-upstairs (78)
poetry-shelf (48)
short-story-shelf (47)
favorites (42)
in-my-library (42)
james-bond (27)
scandi-noir (26)
art-shelf (24)
john-berger-shelf
(20)
mcewan-shelf (19)
french (18)
booker-prize-winners (17)
byatt-shelf (16)
mythology (16)
first-world-war (14)
greene-shelf (14)
le-carre-shelf (14)
alex-miller-shelf (13)
norwegian (13)
cornwell-shelf (12)
mcewan-shelf (19)
french (18)
booker-prize-winners (17)
byatt-shelf (16)
mythology (16)
first-world-war (14)
greene-shelf (14)
le-carre-shelf (14)
alex-miller-shelf (13)
norwegian (13)
cornwell-shelf (12)
“If you mail a rare stamp it becomes worthless. If you drink a rare bottle of wine, you're left with some recycling. But if you read a rare book it's still there, it's still valuable, and it's achieved the full measure of it's being. A book is to read, whether it's worth five pounds or five thousand pounds”
― First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen
― First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen
“One thing about London is that when you step out into the night, it swallows you.”
― Engleby
― Engleby
“You know what, sometimes it seems to me we're living in a world that we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what's good and what isn't, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves... And then we spend our whole lives struggling with what we have invented for ourselves. The problem is that each of us has our own version of it, so people find it hard to understand each other.”
― Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
― Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
“You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting “Vanity,” thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for you own pleasure.”
― Ways of Seeing
― Ways of Seeing
“Fiction does not spring into the world fully grown, like Athena. It is the process of writing and rewriting that makes a fiction original, if not profound.”
― The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers
― The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers
Newest Literary Fiction
— 1513 members
— last activity 31 minutes ago
Discover and share your discovery of the most recently published literary fiction. If you love reading novels before anyone else decides they are good ...more
21st Century Literature
— 3568 members
— last activity 1 hour, 35 min ago
We read literary fiction from 2000 to present, with the intent of finding those literary gems of timeless and enduring quality. We're less focused o ...more
The Mookse and the Gripes
— 2140 members
— last activity 4 hours, 2 min ago
Forum for spirited and convivial discussion of fiction from around the world, with particular though not exclusive focus on 20th and 21st century fict ...more
Books Almost Nobody Reads (But Should)
— 158 members
— last activity Mar 08, 2026 11:16AM
What oldish unread stuff should more people be reading? Do you love riveting out compelling stories from the back shelves of used bookstores? Are you ...more
Homer's The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson
— 199 members
— last activity Aug 15, 2025 01:06PM
In this group, we will read and discuss Emily Wilson's new translation of Homer's The Odyssey, published in November 2017 by Norton. We also welcome d ...more
Marcus’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Marcus’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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