My Bookshelf

A collection of books I've read over the years and those I plan to read.

Table of Contents

Navigate to specific years or books

Free Food for Millionaires

by Min Jin Lee

Fiction

Rating:

"A man could havve so much anger, but a woman, no, a woman could not live with that much rage—that was houw the world worked."
"A spectacular failure was better than safety."
"It was such a curious thing when you thought back to someone you loved: It was possible to remember the unspoiled things, and doing so lit up a bit of the sober darkness in your heart, and all the while the memory of the hurting cast its own shadow, dimming your head with the nagging questions of ifs and why-nots."
"Words never mattered, he said, seasons mattered. Notice how people behave when they're desperate—that's who they are, he warned."
"Life, to Charles, was a series of related acts, and those who succeeded in life seemed to understand the necessity of consistent performances at a high level."
"There was a debt owed to a person who gave you beauty and feeling."

Worry

by Alexandra Tanner

Fiction

Rating:

"I'm a consumer. I'll never blosson into the woman of ideas I like to imagine myseld as late at night. It's not that art is dead. It's just that I'm not going to be one of the ones who makes it"

Martyr!

by Kaveh Akbar

Fiction

Rating:

"'We have difficulty seeing our present selves in history the same way we view our past and future selves."
"That's the whole crisis. The rot at the root of everything. The belief that goodness is built on a constructed absence, not-doing."
"Separation from what you love best, that is hell. To be twice separated, first by a nation and then by its language: that is pain deeper than pain."
"What I want to say is that I was happy. Not always, not even mostly. But I did know real, deep joy. Maybe everyone gets a certain amount to use up over a lifetime..."
"'It's lucky to get to be on the other side. It's a good day when you're not the patient'"
"An alphabet, like a life, is a finite set of shaped. With it, one can produce almost anything."
"Love was a room that appeared when you stepped into it"