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When I step into Mum and Dad’s house, I am greeted by the ever-familiar smell of home. Each house has its own unique scent; a combination of washing powder, perfumes, aftershaves, shower gels, cooking… but also something less tangible.
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This is how it always remains, even when the house and the lives lived together as a family have been lost in the marching forward of relentless time. Something will trigger a sensory memory and one is back opening the door of the familiar and breathing in the love and affection held within its walls.
“He sat down and picked up a pen. He looked at the photograph of him and his brother just after they’d joined up, and words that had so long evaded his mouth now gathered at the nib of his pen, and he wrote down everything he felt and everything he could see. He wrote to Peace once a week between their courting, and what he couldn’t get down on paper that first week he continued into the second week, then the third. He wrote sitting on a harbour bench, he wrote at the tiller of his boat. Peace got to know her fisherman through his letters. And when they met up she made him read them out loud, so that the words that had gathered at the nib of his pen found their rightful place upon his tongue. 47”
― A Year of Marvellous Ways
― A Year of Marvellous Ways
“There aren’t many worse feelings than being lonely in a crowded room. We have never lived in a more connected world, yet loneliness is only increasing. We as a society must look at the value of these connections; a thousand Instagram followers aren’t worth as much as one person who you can communicate honestly and openly with, at least in my opinion.”
― The Boy Between: A Mother and Son's Journey From a World Gone Grey
― The Boy Between: A Mother and Son's Journey From a World Gone Grey
“He remembered how Michael had bragged that he could swim, but he couldn’t. He said that he’d read everything about swimming, firmly believing he could trip across words, like stepping stones, to the bank of experience. But he couldn’t. It would take another summer before Michael would learn to swim. But he floated, though. Face down in the river with his arms and legs out wide, and people watched, and sometimes their laughter turned to panic when they saw little sign of movement. Dead-Man’s Float, he”
― Tin Man
― Tin Man
“The needle breaks the fabric in order to repair it. You can’t have one without the other.”
― Wintering: How I learned to flourish when life became frozen
― Wintering: How I learned to flourish when life became frozen
“There are times when everything seems easy, and times when it all seems impossibly hard. To make that manageable, we only have to remember that our present will one day become a past, and our future will be our present. We know that, because it’s happened before. The things we put behind us will often come around again. The things that trouble us now will one day be past history. Each time we endure the cycle, we ratchet up a notch. We learn from the last time around, and we do a few things better this time; we develop tricks of the mind to see us through. This is how progress is made. But one thing is certain: we will simply have different things to worry about. We will have to clench our teeth and carry on surviving again. In the meantime, we can only deal with what’s in front of us at this moment in time. We take the next necessary action, and the next. At some point along the line, that next action will feel joyful again.”
― Wintering: How I learned to flourish when life became frozen
― Wintering: How I learned to flourish when life became frozen
Jan’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Jan’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
534 books
|
66 friends
1,124 books
|
138 friends
1 book
|
21 friends
597 books
|
4 friends
7 books
|
25 friends
5 books
|
19 friends
1 book
|
67 friends
394 books
|
2 friends
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Jan
Lists liked by Jan
