Adrian Gray

Adrian’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (44)
currently-reading‎ (1)
read‎ (849)
did-not-finish‎ (11)
library-books‎ (449)
female-authors‎ (392)
crime‎ (204)
american-fiction‎ (135)
historical-fiction‎ (133)
recommend‎ (131)
non-fiction‎ (119)

golden-age‎ (71)
booker-novels‎ (39)
gothic‎ (38)
film-books‎ (31)
sci-fi‎ (25)
finn-s-books‎ (23)
books_about_books‎ (19)
graphic-novels‎ (18)
black-history‎ (17)
short-stories‎ (17)
ocr-exam‎ (16)

irish-fiction‎ (9)
87-precinct‎ (8)
ya‎ (8)
environmental-theme‎ (7)
fantasy‎ (7)
anne-tyler-books‎ (5)
working-class-life‎ (5)
observer-best-young‎ (4)
international-booker‎ (3)
spy‎ (3)
cli-fi‎ (2)

granta-best-young-novelists‎ (2)
sport-books‎ (2)
audio-books‎ (1)
borrowed‎ (1)
classics‎ (1)
horror‎ (1)
play‎ (1)
poetry‎ (1)

Stats | More…

Adrian is Currently Reading

Adrian Gray is currently reading

Saraswati

by Gurnaik Johal

bookshelves: currently-reading, library-books, observer-best-young

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

16 hours, 21 min ago

“Routine was a system, a machine that would make me, well. Where before I had noted the ease with which routine arose, here, I felt its implacability, it's remorselessness and determination. It was a schedule designed to stifle possibility, because an excess of possibility had made me ill. At night, the lights in my room snapped off and told me that it was time to sleep. In the morning they flared and told me it was time to wake. After I woke I showered. After I showered I ate. Then I washed down a rainbow of pills and went to my first class or session. My body was irrelevant, my desires redundant and discouraged. To each external stimulus, only a single, pre-approved response was acceptable. (p.319)”
― Sam Byers, Come Join Our Disease

0 likes

“Margot felt self-conscious, timid. She had a fear running into people when she was unwashed. She seemed particularly worried about the people who worked on the estate, most of whom were men, most of whom, I tried to explain, were filthy in their own ways - smeared with grease and dust, or spattered with spray paint and oil. I tried pointing out to her the unfairness of this divide, the way some kinds of dirt were associated with honest, masculine labour, while others were associated with malaise or inertia. She understood this, warmed to it as an idea, but whenever the moment came to leave, she found it some excuse to stay. (p.198)”
― Sam Byers, Come Join Our Disease

0 likes

“Sometimes, looking back, I try to isolate a moment to change, a day or a night on either side of which things were demonstrably different. I never succeed. Partly, I think, is because it's simply not possible. Outside of sudden, violent events, changes is ongoing; we measure it only by holding what we've become against the memory of what we once were. But it's also because, in that space, at that particular time, We were so enmeshed in change, so completely caught up in it that singular, momentary factors became lost and blurred. Day and night slipped their boundaries. Our bodies ached, contorted, then were numbed with narcotics and went slack. My fingernails became sharp, then broken. In regular life, the life we'd left, we would have managed these processes, checked them, turned things back to how they were and how we liked them. There, in that concrete room, we surrendered ourselves to time and all its effects. The heat was unrelenting, pooling us in sweat and thickening the stink in which we lived. (p.271)”
― Sam Byers, Come Join Our Disease

1 likes

“I began to feel as if we were merging with one another. The process was more than simply emotional. It was biological, systemic. Each of our bodies was a biosphere, slick with bacterial and insect life. Reteamed, and what we teamed with brought us closer not only to each other, but to the ecosystem we inhabited, fed off, and nourished. Bacteria bred in the ooze of our waste, our discarded food remains and puddled shit, then travelled onto us and between us, carried not only on the thickened air, but by the fleas and lice that hopped and crawled from one body to another. There was no difference, I began to think, between the puddles on the floor and the streaks of filth on my skin and the acne that erupted on Margot’s face. It was all just life, matter, the biome. We were leaking out into the world, and the pooled primordial essence of the world was soaking back into us in turn. (p.235)”
― Sam Byers, Come Join Our Disease

0 likes

“I understood, too, what was upsetting my supposed benefactors. This wasn't about my work or my Instagram feed, or whatever uncomfortable email or phone call. Ryan and Seth had received this morning from whichever of their corporate partners was currently on edge. This was about the extent to which I would seem to be playing my role. Just as I had come to understand that in the world of Pict it wasn't enough simply to go to work and go home - that there was, in addition, and expectation of some deeper, human contribution - so too, in the context of this programme, this opportunity, it would never be enough simply to point to the material gains I had made. They needed me to be not only successful, but happy, evolved, gratefully aglow. It was my job to make them feel good about themselves and to help them package up that satisfaction for the consumption of others. In my mind, I saw their vision: me, on a podium or stage, perhaps giving a TED talk, gushing about the life in the change in my life they'd occasioned. (p.165)”
― Sam Byers, Come Join Our Disease

tags: capitalism, work

0 likes

More of Adrian’s quotes…