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James

https://www.goodreads.com/boyspotwelder

James’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (1579)
currently-reading‎ (8)
read‎ (777)
did-not-finish‎ (21)
fiction‎ (264)
humorous-fiction‎ (118)
humorous-non-fiction‎ (118)
biography-or-memoir-or-what-have-yo‎ (96)
fiction-by-women‎ (55)
fiction-in-translation‎ (53)
cartoons‎ (50)

british-fiction‎ (49)
classic-crime‎ (47)
non-fiction-other‎ (42)
history‎ (39)
mystery‎ (35)
audio‎ (28)
movies-and-tv‎ (24)
short-stories‎ (23)
travel‎ (21)
philosophy-and-thinking-and-like-th‎ (20)
put-away-for-now‎ (16)

japanese-fiction‎ (12)
french‎ (9)
wodehouse‎ (9)
politics-and-current-events‎ (8)
sports‎ (8)
essays‎ (7)
gave-up-on-forever‎ (6)
norwegian‎ (6)
science‎ (5)
non-fic-in-translation‎ (4)
reread-ing‎ (4)

film‎ (3)
swedish‎ (3)
german‎ (2)
plays‎ (2)
czech‎ (1)
danish‎ (1)
from-spanish‎ (1)
irish‎ (1)
non-fiction-othere‎ (1)
dutch‎ (0)
good-christ-no‎ (0)

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James is Currently Reading

James is currently reading

Women Crime Writers: Four Suspense Novels of the 1940s: Laura / The Horizontal Man / In a Lonely Place / The Blank Wall (Library of America Women Crime Writers Collection)

by Sarah Weinman

bookshelves: classic-crime, fiction-by-women, mystery, currently-reading

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May 06, 2026 07:42PM

James is currently reading

Before the Feast: A Novel

by Saša Stanišić (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: fiction, fiction-in-translation, german, currently-reading

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Jul 21, 2025 06:53PM

James is currently reading

Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith

by Andrew Wilson

bookshelves: biography-or-memoir-or-what-have-yo, currently-reading

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Apr 14, 2025 09:08PM

See all 8 books that James is reading…

“... I'm the fortieth-ugliest man in this bar. But so what! So what! What if someday she lets me kiss each one of her freckles again? She has like a million. But every one of them means something to me. Isn't this how people used to fall in love? I know we're living in Rubenstein's America, like you keep saying. But doesn't that just make us even more responsible for each other's fates? I mean, what if Eunice and I just said no to all this. To this bar. To this FACing. The two of us. What if we just went home and read books to each other?”
― Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story

13 likes

“Remember this... develop a sense of nostalgia for something, or you'll never figure out what's important.”
― Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story

87 likes

“I feel safe with him because he is so not my ideal and I feel like I can be myself because I'm not in love with him.”
― Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story

27 likes

“That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy.”
― Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story

10 likes

“But when I am around strangers, I turn into a conversational Mount St. Helens. I'm dormant, dormant, quiet, quiet, old-guy loners build log cabins on the slopes of my silence and then, boom, it's 1980. Once I erupt, they'll be wiping my verbal ashes off their windshields as far away as North Dakota.”
― Sarah Vowell, Assassination Vacation

tags: so-very-me

44 likes

More of James’s quotes…