36 books
—
22 voters
to-read
(1245)
currently-reading (1)
read (645)
sf-fantasy (258)
short_stories (81)
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2009 (57)
2012 (55)
2010 (49)
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2014 (48)
horror-dark-fantasy (47)
currently-reading (1)
read (645)
sf-fantasy (258)
short_stories (81)
comics-graphic-stuff (77)
2009 (57)
2012 (55)
2010 (49)
2011 (48)
2014 (48)
horror-dark-fantasy (47)
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(46)
2015 (39)
2013 (32)
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2018 (20)
audiobooks (20)
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2015 (39)
2013 (32)
crime (30)
historical-fiction (29)
2016 (28)
italians (28)
indonesia (22)
nyc (21)
2018 (20)
audiobooks (20)
japan (20)
“Helping other people is a drug so dangerous that there is no cure short of total abstention.”
― Human Voices
― Human Voices
“Without ever exactly putting his mind to it, he's come to believe that loss is the standard trajectory. Something new appears in the world-a baby, say, or a car or a house, or an individual shows some special talent-with luck and huge expenditures of soul and effort you might keep the project stoked for a while, but eventually, ultimately, its going down. This is a truth so brutally self-evident that he can't fathom why it's not more widely percieved, hence his contempt for the usual public shock and outrage when a particular situation goes to hell. The war is fucked? Well, duh. Nine-eleven? Slow train coming. They hate our freedoms? Yo, they hate our actual guts! Billy suspects his fellow Americans secretly know better, but something in the land is stuck on teenage drama, on extravagant theatrics of ravaged innocence and soothing mud wallows of self-justifying pity.”
― Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
― Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
“If you are not from a particular place the history of that particular place will dwell inside you differently to how it dwells within those people who are from that particular place. Your connection to certain events that define the history of a particular place is not straightforward because none of your ancestors were in any way involved or affected by those events. You have no stories to relate and compare, you have no narrative to inherit and run with, and all the names are strange ones that mean nothing to you at all. And it's as if the history of a particular place knows all about this blankness you contain. Consequently if you are not from a particular place you will always be vulnerable for the reason that it doesn't matter how many years you have lived there you will never have a side of the story; nothing with which you can hold the full force of the history of a particular place at bay.
And so it comes at you directly, right through the softly padding soles of your feet, battering up throughout your body, before unpacking its clamouring store of images in the clear open spaces of your mind.
Opening out at last; out, out, out
And shimmered across the pale expanse of a flat defenceless sky.
All the names mean nothing to you, and your name means nothing to them.”
― Pond
And so it comes at you directly, right through the softly padding soles of your feet, battering up throughout your body, before unpacking its clamouring store of images in the clear open spaces of your mind.
Opening out at last; out, out, out
And shimmered across the pale expanse of a flat defenceless sky.
All the names mean nothing to you, and your name means nothing to them.”
― Pond
“I think about pinball, and how being a kid’s like being shot up the firing lane and there’s no veering left or right; or you’re just sort of propelled. But once you clear the top, like when you’re sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen, suddenly there’s a thousand different paths you can take, some amazing, others not. Tiny little differences in angles and speed’ll totally alter what happens to you later, so a fraction of an inch to the right, and the ball’ll just hit a pinger and a dinger and fly down between your flippers, no messing, a waste of 10 p. But a fraction to the left and it’s action in the play zone, bumpers and kickers, ramps and slingshots and fame on the high-score table.”
― The Bone Clocks
― The Bone Clocks
“I got my face close up to the man still standing. I let him understand that there was oodles of danger in me; my head wobbled loose, three ticks off center. This scary face is all them such as me has to show this other world, the world in charge of our world, that musters any authority, gets any reluctant respect at all. If us lower elements didn't show our teeth plenty and act fast to bite, we'd just be soft, loamy dirt anybody could walk on, anytime, and you know they would, too, since even with a show of teeth there's a grassless path worn clear across our brains and backs.”
― Tomato Red
― Tomato Red
John’s 2025 Year in Books
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