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173 books
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108 voters
Joshua Nomen-Mutatio
https://www.goodreads.com/joshuanomenmutatio
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“At night, when he is sure his father is sleeping, he sticks the phonograph needle in a rubber eraser and holds the eraser in his front teeth. Carefully, with his nose inches from the record, he sets the needle down. With a hiss and crackle, the music reverberates through the hollows of his mouth and throat without making a sound in the room. Ignoring the cramp in his neck, this is how he listens to his favorite records night after night.”
― Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing: Stories
― Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing: Stories
“I knew I was in the vicinity of a serious lesson, if not about how to live life, then at least how to put some poetry into your craven retreat from it.”
― Home Land
― Home Land
“The tragedy of a species becoming unfit for life by over-evolving one ability is not confined to humankind. Thus it is thought, for instance, that certain deer in paleontological times succumbed as they acquired overly-heavy horns. The mutations must be considered blind, they work, are thrown forth, without any contact of interest with their environment. In depressive states, the mind may be seen in the image of such an antler, in all its fantastic splendour pinning its bearer to the ground.”
― Essays
― Essays
“As we hurry along the sidewalk, we have the absurd sensation that we have entered still another department, composed of ingeniously lifelike streets with artful shadows and reflections--that our destinations lie in a far corner of the same department--that we are condemned to hurry forever through these artificial halls, bright with late afternoon light, in search of the way out.”
― The Knife Thrower and Other Stories
― The Knife Thrower and Other Stories
“I happen to believe that the deepest value of fiction is that, in its very fictiveness, it is the one arena where we can, at least temporarily, take apart and refuse to compete within the terms that the rest of existence insists on. Market value may come to drive out all other human values, except, perhaps, in the country of invented currency, the completely barter-driven economy of the imagination. Fiction, when it remembers its innate priority over other human transactions, can deal not in price but in worth. And that seems to me an act filled with political potential, as well as with pleasure.”
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The Extra Cool Group! (of people Michael is experimenting on)
— 161 members
— last activity Jan 27, 2026 07:27PM
*Note: This group, although it lives on in a sense, like a photograph, capturing a moment so people can look back later and go, "Oh, wow, you looked s ...more
Write, right, rites, reads
— 44 members
— last activity Jul 12, 2011 07:07PM
Discussions of authorship, attribution, social (networking) mores, authenticity, and sundry bookface complexities
this is kuert concrete
— 3 members
— last activity Aug 25, 2010 07:10AM
if you work, or have worked at kuert concrete (thats south bend indiana, kids), come join in discussions. we can hate on northeast underlayments or di ...more
Completists' Club
— 544 members
— last activity Mar 25, 2026 12:59PM
A group for those attempting to complete, or who have completed, the canons of their favourite writers. Share your canon-wide knowledge and opinion wi ...more
Things that make you chuckle
— 25 members
— last activity Dec 08, 2020 09:05AM
Funny quotes, lines from books you like, musings, bumper stickers, whatever makes you laugh. I would hope that we can keep this light-hearted. If anyt ...more
Joshua Nomen-Mutatio’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Joshua Nomen-Mutatio’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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