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2,998 books
—
5,523 voters
Irene
https://www.goodreads.com/lilith89ibz
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Irene
is currently reading
bookshelves:
about-connecting-with-nature,
about-ecology,
about-natural-sciences,
about-nature-or-natural-history,
about-philosophy-or-psychology,
about-science-or-technology,
audience-adult,
genre-academic-or-essay,
genre-non-fiction,
2026-tbr,
format-audiobook,
from-library,
currently-reading
Irene
is currently reading
bookshelves:
currently-reading,
0-nathalie,
0-annotated,
2026-tbr,
about-medicine,
about-natural-sciences,
about-neurology,
about-science-or-technology,
audience-adult,
format-ebook,
from-owned,
genre-academic-or-essay,
genre-non-fiction,
genre-reference
Irene
is currently reading
bookshelves:
1-classics-challenge,
audience-adult,
format-audiobook,
from-owned,
genre-classics,
genre-contemporary-or-lit-fiction,
genre-romance,
owned-audiobook,
2026-tbr,
currently-reading,
about-death-or-grief,
about-love-and-relationships,
format-ebook,
from-library,
0-nathalie,
0-to-annotate,
0-to-re-read,
owned-to-buy
“And we love as we mourn, with wildly variegated, equally sincere emotions. In addition to everything lofty and lusty, love is also being hurt when your wife is brusque with you or annoyed when you realize that your husband has walked past the cat vomit all day without cleaning it up; it is alternately intervening and forbearing when your beloved bites her nails, and listening patiently as your partner vents at length about his boss when you really just want to get back to reading your book. There is no enduring love on the planet, nor ever has been, that isn’t characterized by these crisscrossing moods. “Whoever supposes,” Montaigne once wrote, “to see me look sometimes coldly, sometimes lovingly, on my wife, that either look is feigned, is a fool.”
― Lost & Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness
― Lost & Found: Reflections on Grief, Gratitude, and Happiness
“Disappearance reminds us to notice, transience to cherish, fragility to defend. Loss is a kind of external conscience, urging us to make better use of our finite days. Our crossing is a brief one, best spent bearing witness to all that we see: honoring what we find noble, tending what we know needs our care, recognizing that we are inseparably connected to all of it, including what is not yet upon us, including what is already gone. We are here to keep watch, not to keep.”
― Lost & Found: A Memoir
― Lost & Found: A Memoir
“That is how I feel: that finding one’s beloved is an “Astonishment,” to borrow the title of that Szymborska poem, because, cosmically speaking, there is so much time and space in which not to do so.”
― Lost & Found: A Memoir
― Lost & Found: A Memoir
“Mariez-vous, mon ami, vous ne savez pas ce que c’est que de vivre seul, à mon âge. La solitude, aujourd’hui, m’emplit d’une angoisse horrible : la solitude dans le logis, auprès du feu, le soir. Il me semble alors que je suis seul sur la terre, affreusement seul, mais entouré de dangers vagues, de choses inconnues et terribles ; et la cloison qui me sépare de mon voisin que je ne connais pas, m’éloigne de lui autant que des étoiles aperçues par ma fenêtre. Une sorte de fièvre m’envahit, une fièvre de douleur et de crainte, et le silence des murs m’épouvante. Il est si profond et si triste, le silence de la chambre où l’on vit seul. Ce n’est pas seulement un silence autour du corps, mais un silence autour de l’âme, et, quand un meuble craque, on tressaille jusqu’au cœur, car aucun bruit n’est attendu dans ce morne logis.”
― Bel-Ami
― Bel-Ami
“It is this harsh corrective to our sense of being central, competent, and powerful that makes even trivial losses so difficult to accept. To lose something is a profoundly humbling act. It forces us to confront the limits of our mind: the fact that we left our wallet at the restaurant; the fact that we can’t remember where we left our wallet at all. It forces us to confront the limits of our will: the fact that we are powerless to protect the things we love from time and change and chance. Above all, it forces us to confront the limits of existence: the fact that, sooner or later, it is in the nature of almost everything to vanish or perish. Over and over, loss calls on us to reckon with this universal impermanence—with the baffling, maddening, heartbreaking fact that something that was just here can be, all of a sudden, just gone.”
― Lost & Found: A Memoir
― Lost & Found: A Memoir
Irene’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Irene’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Favorite Genres
Adult Fiction, Art, Biography, Children's, Classics, Comics, Contemporary, Fantasy, Fiction, Gay and Lesbian, History, Horror, Humor and Comedy, Memoir, Music, Non-fiction, Paranormal, Philosophy, Poetry, Psychology, Science, Science fiction, Suspense, Travel, science-fiction-fantasy, german-literature, european-literature, scandinavian-literature, and cozy-mystery
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