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77,830 books
—
290,377 voters
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(1061)
currently-reading (50)
read (913)
did-not-finish (0)
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sf (175)
anthropocene-warm (86)
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favorites (65)
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history (47)
sff (46)
currently-reading (50)
read (913)
did-not-finish (0)
fantasy (201)
sf (175)
anthropocene-warm (86)
critical-theory (85)
favorites (65)
historical-fiction (53)
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sff (46)
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(44)
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political (37)
collections (36)
americana (32)
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graphic-novels (21)
psychology (21)
artificial-intelligence (16)
economics (15)
horror (15)
philosophy (41)
political (37)
collections (36)
americana (32)
cognitive-science (30)
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graphic-novels (21)
psychology (21)
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horror (15)
“Human beings live in their myths. They only endure their realities.”
―
―
“But the problem with readers, the idea we're given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, "I should sit here and I should be entertained." And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don't know, who they probably couldn't comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you. That's the incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It's an old moral, but it's completely true.”
―
―
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
―
―
“He not busy being born is busy dying.”
―
―
“So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.”
― On the Road
― On the Road
Alexander’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Alexander’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
1,792 books
|
67 friends
3,982 books
|
180 friends
1,966 books
|
169 friends
687 books
|
82 friends
720 books
|
103 friends
1,165 books
|
103 friends
5,455 books
|
313 friends
674 books
|
58 friends
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