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221 books
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1,574 voters
His mind’s eye began to draw unhelpful images of benthic abysses, slimy tresses of seaweed, chasms within chasms where lurked… something. Amidst all this distraction he was listening, reaching out. Mind’s ear attuned, mind’s fingers deft,
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“I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived. I believe that all the best faculties of a mature human being exist in the child. . . . that one of the most deeply human, and humane, of these faculties is the power of imagination.”
― The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
― The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
“Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby. No hitchhiking. And if you want to strike out in any new direction — you go alone. With a machete in your hand and the fear of God in your heart.”
― The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
― The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
“Ankit makes a drink that’s gonna make Randall absinthe with envy. It’s like a liquid portal between dimensions. You’ve gotta try it.’ ‘Always a pleasure to prepare the portal for you, sir.’ ‘You girls have got so much in common,’ I said, and thought to say more, but Blue Hijab and Karla looked at me in exactly the same not very flattering way, and I unthought it. ‘You marry them,’ Blue Hijab said, ‘hoping they’ll change, and grow. And they marry us, hoping that we won’t.’ ‘The connubial Catch 22,’ Karla said, taking Blue Hijab by the arm and leading her back to the Bedouin tent. ‘Come with me, you poor girl, and freshen up. You look very tired. How far have you come today?”
― The Mountain Shadow
― The Mountain Shadow
“Mubei: Zhongguo Liushi Niandai Da Jihuang Jishi [Tombstone: A Record of the Great Chinese Famine of the 60s], Cosmos Books, Hong Kong, 2008.”
― The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers
― The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers
“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel – or have done and thought and felt; or might do and think and feel – is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become… A person who had never listened to nor read a tale or myth or parable or story, would remain ignorant of his own emotional and spiritual heights and depths, would not know quite fully what it is to be human. For the story – from Rumpelstiltskin to War and Peace – is one of the basic tools invented by the mind of man, for the purpose of gaining understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.”
― The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
― The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction
Ralph’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Ralph’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
37 books
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143 friends
46 books
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8 friends
583 books
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2 friends
467 books
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47 friends
30 books
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47 friends
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