638 ratings (4.05 avg)
20 reviews
more photos (1)

Cara

Add friend

https://www.goodreads.com/illyriathemerciless

Cara’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (1555)
currently-reading‎ (0)
read‎ (649)
did-not-finish‎ (0)

favorites‎ (45)
public-health‎ (43)
history‎ (32)
biography‎ (23)

science‎ (23)
2016-goals‎ (19)
the-atlantic-world‎ (17)
partially-read‎ (13)

adventure‎ (4)
africa‎ (1)
feminism‎ (1)
latin-and-south-america‎ (0)

Stats | More…

Cara’s Notes & Highlights

Book cover for Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone

Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone by Richard Lloyd Parry

1 highlight

At a refugee community in Onagawa, an old neighbor would appear in the living rooms of the temporary houses and sit down for a cup of tea with their startled occupants. No one had the heart to tell her that she was dead; the cushion on ...more

Cara’s Quotes

“Sit down before a fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.” He also believed that learning had purpose, stating, “The great end of life is not knowledge but action.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

5 likes

“In 1884, the American physician William Pancoast injected sperm from his “best-looking” student into an anesthetized woman—without her knowledge—whose husband had been deemed infertile. Nine months later, she gave birth to a healthy baby. Pancoast eventually told her husband what he had done, but the two men decided to spare the woman the truth. Pancoast’s experiment remained a secret for twenty-five years.”
― Lindsey Fitzharris, The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine

3 likes

“Hofstadter fretted that in a “populistic culture like ours, which seems to lack a responsible elite with political and moral autonomy,” democracy was open to being co-opted by “the wildest currents of public sentiment for private purposes,” where “a highly organized, vocal, active, and well-financed minority could create a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible.”
― Colin Dickey, Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy

0 likes

“A community divided, whose ideas of preparedness involve procuring guns or fortified bunkers, is at risk. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: if you treat your neighbor as a potential enemy, you make him one, and in so doing contribute to your society’s collapse.”
― Lucy Jones, The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us

0 likes

“The world of paranoid distrust did not arise out of a vacuum. The Tuskegee syphilis experiment, the Challenger disaster, the AIDS crisis—again and again science and government have revealed not only their failure to deliver on basic health and safety, but their steadfast refusal to take ownership. Until they do, conspiracies about government cover-ups will continue, and distrust of the scientific establishment will be widespread and often warranted.”
― Colin Dickey, The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained

0 likes

More of Cara’s quotes…

recent posts
Cara’s Groups

Fans of Southern Literature — 545 members — last activity Aug 30, 2025 04:35AM
This is a group that discusses Southern authors and literature. We as a group have people who come together and talk about the great southern books we ...more

Irish Lit & Times — 353 members — last activity Jan 26, 2026 06:47AM
Celtic peoples and lovers of the Irish alike, gather to sing our songs of joyous melancholia! Come discuss anything related to any Irish author, and f ...more

Jane Austen — 5355 members — last activity Mar 16, 2026 03:53PM
Established July 2007. Readers of Jane, gather here to discuss anything from Frank Churchill's secrets to Lady Catherine's whims. What finally "persua ...more

CKBC — 61 members — last activity Oct 22, 2014 02:26PM
Even cults need bookclubs, right?

Our Shared Shelf — 222886 members — last activity Mar 21, 2026 02:17AM
OUR SHARED SHELF IS CURRENTLY DORMANT AND NOT MANAGED BY EMMA AND HER TEAM. Dear Readers, As part of my work with UN Women, I have started reading ...more

More of Cara’s groups…