Derek McDow

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Journeys in Dream...
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Footnotes in Gaza
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The Yellow House
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See all 14 books that Derek is reading…
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Viktor E. Frankl
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Viktor E. Frankl

Charles D'Ambrosio
“We shoot our heroes and enjoy peripeteia as a spectacle akin to sport and perhaps harshly disavowing the past protects us from the disappointment of our outsized hopes--who knows, really, but shifts in taste don't fully account for the phenomenon. At any rate, nearly everything urgent and alive becomes doo-wop down the road, at least in this country's pop culture, and along the way a somewhat self-hating irony lays waste not only to the work but to the desires it once carried. It's like we die into adulthood.”
Charles D'Ambrosio

Leslie Jamison
“Metaphors are tiny saviors leading the way out of sentimentality, small disciples of Pound, urging "Say it new! Say it new!" It's hard for emotion to feel flat if its language is suitably novel, to feel excessive if its rendering is suitably opaque. Metaphors translate emotion into surprising and sublime language, but they also help us deflect and diffuse the glare of revelation.”
Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams

Paul Kalanithi
“Anatomy lab, in the end, becomes less a violation of the sacred and more something that interferes with happy hour, and that realization discomfits. In our rare reflective moments, we were all silently apologizing to our cadavers, not because we sensed the transgression but because we did not.”
Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

Octavia E. Butler
“When apparent stability disintegrates, As it must— God is Change— People tend to give in To fear and depression, To need and greed. When no influence is strong enough To unify people They divide. They struggle, One against one, Group against group, For survival, position, power. They remember old hates and generate new ones, They create chaos and nurture it. They kill and kill and kill, Until they are exhausted and destroyed, Until they are conquered by outside forces, Or until one of them becomes A leader Most will follow, Or a tyrant Most fear.”
Octavia E. Butler, Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

116231 International Reads — 591 members — last activity Aug 31, 2019 08:44PM
This book club's focus is on reading as diversely as possible. We hope to read books we may not otherwise have read or even heard of! This book club ...more
79477 Women and Men — 229 members — last activity Nov 07, 2025 04:09AM
Women and Men began as a reading group for Joseph McElroy's masterpiece. It has developed into All Things McElroy. We have chapter threads for discuss ...more
59349 Reading the Classics — 4049 members — last activity May 10, 2025 07:28AM
This is a group for people who want to read the classics and discuss them as a group. Each month we will choose as a group a book to read. Everyone is ...more
233 ¡ POETRY ! — 22572 members — last activity Dec 24, 2025 01:37PM
No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read ...more
35402 Loosed in Translation — 525 members — last activity Jan 14, 2026 02:22PM
Are you interested in world literature, and works in translation? Come here for recommendations, resources, links, advice on who the best translator o ...more
More of Derek’s groups…
year in books
Nate
978 books | 215 friends

Andi M.
2,639 books | 1,284 friends

Katie
489 books | 497 friends

Luke
504 books | 61 friends

Margare...
998 books | 146 friends

Mark Wi...
820 books | 52 friends

Gina
4,108 books | 240 friends

Laura
717 books | 56 friends

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Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Best New Directions Books
262 books — 179 voters
Infinite Jest by David Foster WallaceUlysses by James JoyceBlood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthyCatch-22 by Joseph Heller
Best Books Ever
76,439 books — 284,288 voters

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