Lauren

Add friend
Sign in to Goodreads to learn more about Lauren.

https://www.goodreads.com/lrnjoy

Loading...
Isabel Wilkerson
“A century after the slaveholder spoke those words, the caste system had survived and mutated, its pillars intact. America was fighting in World War II, and the public school district in Columbus, Ohio, decided to hold an essay contest, challenging students to consider the question “What to do with Hitler after the War?” It was the spring of 1944, the same year that a black boy was forced to jump to his death, in front of his stricken father, over the Christmas card the boy had sent to a white girl at work. In that atmosphere, a sixteen-year-old African-American girl thought about what should befall Hitler. She won the student essay contest with a single sentence: “Put him in a black skin and let him live the rest of his life in America.”
Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Gillian Flynn
“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.

Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”)”
Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

Ariel Lawhon
“I have lost my train of thought, cannot recall what I meant to find in the diary. This is the trouble faced by any woman who sets pen to paper in a busy household. I am never guaranteed the certainty of quiet, much less a solid length of time to chase my thoughts and bind them together. That is the luxury of men with libraries, butlers, and wives. Mothers find a different way to get their work done.”
Ariel Lawhon, The Frozen River

Ernest Hemingway
“There is never any ending to Paris, and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. Paris was always worth it, and you received return for whatever you brought to it…”
Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Isabel Wilkerson
“With our current ruptures, it is not enough to not be racist or sexist. Our times call for being pro-African-American, pro-woman, pro-Latino, pro-Asian, pro-indigenous, pro-humanity in all its manifestations. In our era, it is not enough to be tolerant. You tolerate mosquitoes in the summer, a rattle in an engine, the gray slush that collects at the crosswalk in winter. You tolerate what you would rather not have to deal with and wish would go away. It is no honor to be tolerated. Every spiritual tradition says love your neighbor as yourself, not tolerate them. —”
Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

16435 Reddit — 2315 members — last activity May 26, 2022 02:58PM
I heard that you had a passing interest in literature...
333571 Book of The Month — 2529 members — last activity 1 hour, 35 min ago
I have decided to create a group for anyone that has a subscription to "Book of the Month" club. If you don't have a subscription but would like t ...more
year in books
Melanie
666 books | 37 friends

Ann Fra...
368 books | 165 friends

Vivian ...
30 books | 47 friends

Sarah
293 books | 59 friends

Carmen
2 books | 85 friends

Amanda ...
8,274 books | 276 friends

Natalie
446 books | 75 friends

Lawrenc...
178 books | 45 friends

More friends…
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
The Worst Books of All Time
8,096 books — 19,875 voters
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Best Books of the 21st Century
9,848 books — 22,141 voters

More…



Polls voted on by Lauren

Lists liked by Lauren