Bertbarber

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


Loading...
John Updike
“Why does anyone live here? Why was he set down here; why is this particular ordinary town for him the center and index of a universe that contains great prairies, mountains, deserts, forests, cities, seas? This childish mystery—the mystery of “any place,” prelude to the ultimate, “Why am I me?”—re-ignites panic in his heart.”
John Updike, Rabbit, Run

Julian Barnes
“What an awful thing life is, isn’t it? It’s like soup with lots of hairs floating on the surface. You have to eat it nevertheless.”
Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

Julian Barnes
“(1850) ‘From time to time, I open a newspaper. Things seem to be proceeding at a dizzy rate. We are dancing not on the edge of a volcano, but on the wooden seat of a latrine, and it seems to me more than a touch rotten. Soon society will go plummeting down and drown in nineteen centuries of shit. There’ll be quite a lot of shouting.”
Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

Ian McEwan
“All copulating creatures are vulnerable to attack, but selection over time must have proved that reproductive success was best served by undivided attention. Better to allow the occasional couple to be eaten midrapture than dilute by one jot a vigorous procreational urge. But for seconds on end I had wholesomely and simultaneously indulged two of life's central, antithetical pleasures, reading and fucking.”
Ian McEwan, Enduring Love

“At one point we would have called these affairs consensual, for they were, and were conducted with my vague understanding that they were happening. Now, however, young women have apparently lost all agency in romantic entanglements. Now my husband was abusing his power, never mind that power is the reason they desired him in the first place. Whatever the current state of my marriage may be, I still can't think about it all without my blood boiling. My anger is not so much directed toward the accusations as it is toward the lack of self-regard these women have - the lack of their own confidence. I wish they could see themselves not as little leaves swirled around by the wind of a world that does not belong to them, but as powerful, sexual women interested in engaging in a little bit of danger, a little bit of taboo, a little bit of fun. With the highly objectionable move toward a populist insistence of morality in art, I find this post hoc prudery offensive, as a fellow female.”
Julia May Jonas, Vladimir

1036 Espionage Aficionados — 989 members — last activity Mar 21, 2026 02:16AM
Pssst--buddy. Dig spy stories? Foreign intrigue? Conspiracies? Join up with.. We got LeCarre, Deighton; Follett; Littell; Ambler; Furst; Silva a ...more
year in books
George ...
325 books | 30 friends

Alice B...
150 books | 69 friends

Lydia B...
8 books | 1 friend



Favorite Genres



Polls voted on by Bertbarber

Lists liked by Bertbarber