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Tal Taran
Tal Taran is 38% done with The Painted Bird
“The peasants said the smoke from the crematories went straight to heaven, laying a soft carpet at God’s feet without even soiling them. I wondered whether so many Jews were necessary to compensate God for the killing of his son.”
Apr 19, 2026 06:29AM Add a comment
The Painted Bird

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is on page 119 of 224 of Touching the Void
“I almost believed that I wasn’t going to be allowed to escape; whatever I did would lead to another barrier, and then another, until I stopped and gave in.”
Apr 14, 2026 03:06AM Add a comment
Touching the Void

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is on page 118 of 224 of Touching the Void
“I felt as if I had been fighting someone too strong for me for far too long.”
Apr 14, 2026 03:04AM Add a comment
Touching the Void

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is on page 89 of 224 of Touching the Void
“Reality had become a nightmare, and sleep beckoned insistently; a black hole calling me, pain-free, lost in time, like death.”
Apr 11, 2026 02:29PM Add a comment
Touching the Void

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is on page 82 of 224 of Touching the Void
“Words wasted into the snow and wind, shouted to no one in particular in a shaking fury of bitterness and grievance. Idiot words, as meaningless as the hissing empty wind around me.”
Apr 11, 2026 12:52PM Add a comment
Touching the Void

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is on page 61 of 224 of Touching the Void
“…I could ignore much of the pain. It became one more difficultly to contend with and merged with all the other problems…”
Apr 11, 2026 12:12PM Add a comment
Touching the Void

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is on page 37 of 224 of Touching the Void
"If you succeed with one dream, you come back to square one and it's not long before you're conjuring u another, slightly harder, a bit more ambitious—a bit more dangerous. I didn't like the thought of where it might be leading me, As if, in some strange way, the very nature of the game was controlling me, taking me towards a logical but frightening conclusion; it always unsettled me, this moment..."
Apr 10, 2026 02:24PM Add a comment
Touching the Void

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is 61% done with Doctor Zhivago
"He was a dreamer, eternally absorbed in his fantasies. Because of his limitless good nature and colossal size, which kept him from noticing anything smaller than himself, he failed to give sufficient attention to what was going on, misunderstood all that was said, and, mistaking the views of his opponents for his own, agreed with everything."
Feb 24, 2026 02:45AM Add a comment
Doctor Zhivago

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is 57% done with Parable of the Sower
“There’s no narcotic like exhaustion.”
Jan 26, 2026 01:58PM Add a comment
Parable of the Sower

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is on page 144 of 248 of The Plague
"In the memories of those who lived through them, the grim days of the plague do not stand out like livid flames, ravenous and inextinguishable, beaconing a troubled sky, but rather like the slow, deliberate progress of some monstrous thing crushing out all upon its path."
Dec 09, 2025 04:39AM Add a comment
The Plague

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is on page 62 of 248 of The Plague
"Their despair saved them from panic, thus their misfortune had a good side. For instance, if it happened that one of them was carried off by the disease, it was almost always without his having had time to realise it. Snatched suddenly from his long, silent communion with a wraith of memory, he was plunged straightway into the densest silence of all. He'd had no time for anything."
Nov 29, 2025 04:51AM Add a comment
The Plague

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is 5% done with Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
“The defenders of traditional morality are seldom people with warm hearts.”

From ‘What I Believe’
Nov 12, 2025 06:28AM Add a comment
Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is on page 4 of 248 of The Plague
"The men and women consume each other rapidly in what is called 'the act of love', or else settle down to a mild habit of conjugality. We seldom find a mean between these extremes. That, too, is not exceptional. At Oran, as elsewhere, for lack of time and thinking, people have to love each other without knowing much about it."
Oct 26, 2025 05:37AM Add a comment
The Plague

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is 96% done with Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir
“Occasionally I watch trash TV because I think the poet shouldn’t avert his eyes.”
Oct 06, 2025 02:18AM Add a comment
Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is on page 70 of 192 of Selected Poems, 1968-1996
“What should I say about my life? That it’s long.”
Oct 04, 2025 07:14AM Add a comment
Selected Poems, 1968-1996

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is 36% done with Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir
“If you harshly light every last corner of a house, the house will be uninhabitable. It’s like that with your soul, if you light it up, shadows and darkness and all, people will become uninhabitable. I’m convinced that it’s psychoanalysis, along with quite a few other mistakes, that has made the 20th century so terrible. As far as I’m concerned the 20th century in its entirety was a mistake.”
Oct 02, 2025 11:40AM Add a comment
Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is 44% done with War and Peace
There are so few excuses for a book being this long. I assume Tolstoy was paid per page... What I've learnt so far is:

Life is meaningless and never ends...
Aug 19, 2025 04:44AM Add a comment
War and Peace

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is on page 42 of 744 of Everest: From Reconnaissance to Summit, 1921 to 1953
"the highest of mountains is capable of severity, a severity so awful and so fatal that the wiser sort of men do well to think and tremble even on the threshold of their high endeavour."
- Mallory
Jun 18, 2025 05:15AM Add a comment
Everest: From Reconnaissance to Summit, 1921 to 1953

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is starting Everest: From Reconnaissance to Summit, 1921 to 1953
"He would have walked on, even to his end, because for him as for all of his generation death was but 'a frail barrier' that men crossed, 'smiling and gallant, every day'. They had seen so much of death that life mattered less than the moments of being alive."
Jun 12, 2025 07:44AM Add a comment
Everest: From Reconnaissance to Summit, 1921 to 1953

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is starting Everest: From Reconnaissance to Summit, 1921 to 1953
"There was in fact a growing divide between those who still considered climbing to be a sport of gentlemen, and a new generation who played in an altogether different league. The former used the language of war to describe their efforts and intentions on a mountain; the latter had lived through a war that allowed them to walk with grace and commitment at the very edge of death."
Jun 12, 2025 07:31AM Add a comment
Everest: From Reconnaissance to Summit, 1921 to 1953

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is starting The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
"But not one of them knew or guessed that if there were one man on Earth who knew better than anybody else that I was absurd it was myself."
Jun 03, 2025 03:06AM Add a comment
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is 7% done with Time Is a Mother
“I know the room you’ve been crying in is called America. I know the door is not invented yet.”
from Beautiful Short Loser
Jun 01, 2025 12:25PM Add a comment
Time Is a Mother

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is 37% done with If This Is a Man / The Truce
"Today the only thing left of the life of those days is what one needs to suffer hunger and cold. I am not even alive enough to know how to kill myself."
May 14, 2025 05:50AM Add a comment
If This Is a Man / The Truce

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is 33% done with If This Is a Man / The Truce
“It is lucky that it is not windy today.

Strange how in some way one always has the impression of being fortunate. How some chance happening, perhaps infinitesimal, stops us crossing the threshold of despair and allows us to live.

It is raining, but it is not windy.”
May 14, 2025 05:10AM Add a comment
If This Is a Man / The Truce

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is 2% done with If This Is a Man / The Truce
“We had learnt of our destination with relief—Auschwitz—a name without significance at that time but it at least implied some place ‘on this earth’.”
May 11, 2025 03:14AM Add a comment
If This Is a Man / The Truce

Tal Taran
Tal Taran is on page 87 of 181 of The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
“The parting, like the white fruit of an apple discolouring instantly around the bite, had begun three days before when they had met aboard the Rakuyo. Saying goodbye now entailed not a single new emotion.”
May 08, 2025 05:49AM Add a comment
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

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