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Melissa

Melissa’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (229)
currently-reading‎ (3)
read‎ (619)
did-not-finish‎ (33)
american-literature‎ (86)
my-ebooks‎ (84)
favorites‎ (60)
audiobooks‎ (57)
schoolbooks‎ (56)
life-inspiration‎ (54)
library‎ (47)
memoir‎ (42)

history‎ (41)
fantasy‎ (39)
european-literature‎ (33)
cities‎ (32)
historical-fiction‎ (31)
short-story‎ (31)
science‎ (29)
mystery‎ (24)
nyc‎ (23)
book-of-the-month-club‎ (19)
romance‎ (19)
illustrated‎ (18)

dystopian‎ (17)
cli-fi‎ (15)
spiritual‎ (15)
environmental-humanities‎ (14)
italiano‎ (14)
feminism‎ (13)
guilty-pleasures‎ (13)
food‎ (12)
science-fiction‎ (12)
essays‎ (10)
poetry‎ (10)
top-10‎ (10)

humor‎ (9)
italian-literature‎ (9)
anti-racism‎ (8)
re-read‎ (8)
planning‎ (5)
satire‎ (5)
español‎ (4)
plays‎ (4)
post-colonial‎ (4)
degrowth‎ (3)
korean-lit‎ (3)
anarchy‎ (2)

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Melissa is Currently Reading

Melissa is currently reading

Playground

by Richard Powers

bookshelves: currently-reading

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Aug 31, 2026 11:55PM

Melissa rated a book really liked it

The Hobbit, or There and Back Again

by J.R.R. Tolkien

bookshelves: fantasy, currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in October 2002

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Aug 21, 2026 01:49AM

Melissa is currently reading

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

by Tom Wolfe

bookshelves: currently-reading

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Jun 20, 2026 06:31AM

Melissa’s Quotes

“The city is redundant: it repeats itself so that something will stick in the mind.

[…]

Memory is redundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

28 likes

“Men will never rest till they've spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

69 likes

“Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never have.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

113 likes

“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”
― David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

240 likes

“You are growing into consciousness, and my wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other people comfortable.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

tags: african-americans, being-yourself, blacks, growing-up, race-relations, racism, self

503 likes

More of Melissa’s quotes…