1 1001 books
2 bag sale books
3 banned books
4 bookmooch
5 poached books
6 prize winners
7 stories
8 translations
9 verso's radical thinkers

Message edited by its author, Jan 3, 2009, 1:17pm.

1001 books




1 a dance to the music of time: first movement anthony powell (2 may-27 may)
2 a dance to the music of time: second movement anthony powell (30 august-9 october)
3 a dance to the music of time: third movement anthony powell
4 a dance to the music of time: fourth movement anthony powell
5 orlando virginia woolf (11 october-14 october)
6 the waves virginia woolf (19 july-26 july)
7 jacob's room virginia woolf (26 october-4 november)
8 the years virginia woolf (5 april-13 april)
9 between the acts virginia woolf (6 june)

Message edited by its author, Nov 5, 2009, 2:48pm.

bag sale




1 let us now praise famous men james agee (12 july-2 august)
2 brick lane monica ali (1 march- 6 march)
3 ceremony leslie marmon silko
4 never let me go kazuo ishiguro
5 the absolutely true diary of a part-time indian sherman alexie (23 september)
6 a history of the world in 10 1/2 chapters julian barnes
7 the story of edgar sawtelle david wroblewski
8 the abstinence teacher tom perrotta (22 april-24 april)
9 revolutionary road richard yates (25 april-27 april)

Message edited by its author, Sep 23, 2009, 4:05pm.

banned books




1 das kapital: volume one karl marx (2 february-12 february)
2 das kapital volume two karl marx (22 march- 31 march)
3 das kapital: volume three karl marx
4 doctor zhivago boris pasternak
5 lolita vladimir nabokov
6 moll flanders daniel defoe (20 january-22 january)
7 an american tragedy theodore dreiser (5 july-19 july)
8 the canterbury tales geoffrey chaucer (18 april-21 april)
9 tropic of cancer henry miller

Message edited by its author, Today, 10:42am.

bookmooch




1 peony in love lisa see (27 february-28 february)
2 the monsters of templeton lauren groff (19 august-22 august)
3 a mercy toni morrison (21 october-26 october)
4 island of the sequined love nun chistopher moore (14 january-16 january)
5 when you are engulfed in flames david sedaris (24 july-25 july)
6 olive kitteridge elizabeth strout (13 november-20 november)
7 absurdistan gary shteyngart (15 june-17 june)
8 snow flower and the secret fan lisa see (27 january-28 january)
9 self yann martel (14 october-17 october)

Message edited by its author, Nov 20, 2009, 11:44am.

poached




1 a thousand plateaus deleuze & guattari
2 the book of franza & requiem for fanny goldmann ingeborg bachmann
3 thus spoke zarathustra friedrich nietzsche (26 january-27 january)
4 phenomenology of spirit g.w.f. hegel
5 hiroshima: three witnesses (6 august-12 august)
6 art history marilyn stokstad (23 february-27 february)
7 this sex which is not one luce irigaray
8 a finite thinking jean-luc nancy
9 song of solomon toni morrison (18 february- 22 february)

Message edited by its author, Sep 23, 2009, 4:06pm.

prize winners




1 the inheritance of loss kiran desai (man booker prize 2006) (12 february-16 february)
2 middlesex jeffrey eugenides (pulitzer prize 2003) (20 june-30 june)
3 life of pi yann martel (man booker prize 2002) (21 june-25 june)
4 the sea john banville (man booker prize 2005) (7 june-8 june)
5 the white tiger aravind adiga (man booker prize 2008)
6 gilead marilynne robinson (pulitzer prize 2005) (24 january-25 january )
7 amsterdam ian mcewan (man booker prize 1998) (1 january-2 january)
8 the gathering anne enright (man booker prize 2007)
9 august: osage county tracy lets (pulitzer prize 2008) (12 january)

Message edited by its author, Jul 8, 2009, 3:35pm.

stories




1 unaccustomed earth jhumpa lahiri (3 january-6 january)
2 jesus in the mist paul ruffin
3 too much happiness alice munro (6 november-9 november)
4 east, west salman rushdie
5 the toughest indian in the world sherman alexie (29 january-30 january)
6 say you're one of them uwem akpan (29 september-1 october)
7 st lucy's home for girls raised by wolves karen russell (4 september-21 september)
8 delicate edible birds lauren groff (13 march- 15 march)
9 twilight of the superheroes deborah eisenberg

Message edited by its author, Nov 9, 2009, 4:19pm.

translations




1 atomised michel houellebecq (1 july-4 july)
2 blindness jose saramago (10 november-12 november)
3 the savage detectives roberto bolano
4 volupte charles sainte-beuve (28 april-1 may)
5 penguin island anatole france (19 january-20 january)
6 the crazy iris kenzaburo oe (12 august-18 august)
7 the magic mountain thomas mann
8 the pianist wladyslaw szpilman (23 august-27 august)
9 the diving bell and the butterfly jean-dominique bauby

Message edited by its author, Nov 12, 2009, 11:40pm.

verso's radical thinkers




1 fragments jean baudrillard
2 liberalism and democracy norberto bobbio
3 strategy of deception paul virilio (27 april)
4 emancipation(s) ernesto laclau
5 the perfect crime jean beaudrillard (7 march-11 march)
6 a study on authority herbert marcuse (13 january)
7 what does the ruling class do when it rules? goran therborn
8 open sky paul virilio (19 october-20 october)
9 minima moralia theodor adorno (22 november- )

Message edited by its author, Nov 21, 2009, 10:15pm.

Hi, you have some pretty neat categories. And it looks like a pretty ambitious reading list.

What is "poached"?

poached books are ones that i bought at college bookstores that were required for classes i wasn't taking

i bought them anyway so that i could read them, but then i never did

(i looked at the pictures in art history though)

The A Dance to the music of time books you've listed are omnibus of three books each so 12 bks in total! I've only listed bk 4 on my 999 challenge. I've also got Ghost Road down to read but have just noticed that it is the third book in the Regeneration trilogy. Good luck with your reading it's a great challenge. You have lots of interesting books listed here.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you think of the two Sherman Alexie books on your list.

1
amsterdam ian mcewan







"During the first hour or so, after he had turned south into the Langstrath, he felt, despite his optimism, the unease of outdoor solitude wrap itself around him. He drifted helplessly into a daydream, an elaborate story about someone hiding behind a rock, waiting to kill him. Now and then he glanced over his shoulder. He knew this feeling well because he often hiked alone. There was always a reluctance to be overcome. It was an act of will, a tussle with instinct, to keep walking away from the nearest people, from shelter, warmth, and help. A sense of scale habituated to the daily perspectives of rooms and streets was suddenly affronted by a colossal emptiness. The mass of rock rising above the valley was one long frown set in stone. The hiss and thunder of the stream was the very language of threat. His sinking spirit and all his basic inclinations told him the it was foolish and unnecessary to keep on, that he was making a mistake.

Clive kept on because the shrinking and apprehension were precisely the conditions--the sickness--from which he sought release, and proof that his daily grind--crouching over that piano for hours every day--had reduced him to a cringing state. He would be large again, and unafraid. There was no threat here, only elemental indifference. There were dangers, of course,

but only the usual ones, and mild enough--injury from a fall, getting lost, a violent change of weather, night. Managing these would restore him to a sense of control. Soon human meaning would be bleached from the rocks, the landscape would assume its beauty and draw him in; the unimaginable age of the mountains and the fine mesh of living things that lay across them would remind him that he was part of this order and insignificant within it, and he would be set free" (83-84).

Message edited by its author, May 27, 2009, 4:53pm.

2
unaccustomed earth jhumpa lahiri







"In their opinion their children were immune from the hardships and injustices they had left behind in India, as if the inoculations the pediatrician had given Sudha and Rahul when they were babies guaranteed them an existence free of suffering" (144).

Message edited by its author, Jun 26, 2009, 8:58am.

3
august: osage county tracy letts







"I don't know what it says about me that I have a greater affinity with the damaged. Probably nothing good" (11).

Message edited by its author, May 27, 2009, 4:53pm.

4
a study on authority herbert marcuse







"We see a society of individuals, each one of whom appears with the natural claim to the 'free exercise of his will,' and confronts everyone else with this claim (since the field of possible claims is limited); a society of individuals, for each of whom it is a 'postulate of practical reason' to have as his own very external object of his will and who all, with equal rights, confront each other with the natural striving after 'appropriation' and 'acquisition'. Such a society is a society of universal insecurity, general disruption and all-round vulnerability" (39).

Message edited by its author, Aug 6, 2009, 1:49pm.

5
island of the sequined love nun christopher moore







"Jake had always told him that people used obvious passwords if you knew the people. Something they wouldn't forget. Put yourself in their place, you'll figure out their passwords, and don't eliminate the possibility that it may be written on a Post-it note stuck to the computer" (267).

Message edited by its author, Jun 5, 2009, 5:13pm.

6
penguin island anatole france







"Our astonishment cannot be too great at the fact that, during those iron ages, the faith was preserved intact among the Penguins. The splendour of the truth in those times illumined all souls that had not been corrupted by sophisms. This is the explanation of the unity of belief. A constant practice of the Church doubtless contributed also to maintain this happy communion of the faithful--every penguin who thought differently from the others was immediately burned at the stake" (90).

Message edited by its author, Apr 23, 2009, 10:57pm.

7
moll flanders daniel defoe







"poverty hardened my heart, and my own necessities made me regardless of anything. The last affair left no great concern upon me, for as I did the poor child no harm, I only thought I had given the parents a just reproof for their negligence in leaving the poor lamb to come home by itself, and it would teach them to take more care another time.

This string of beads was worth about 12l. or 14l. I suppose it might have been formerly the mother's, for it was too big for the child's wear, but that perhaps the vanity of the mother to have her child look fine at the dancing-school had made her let the child wear it; and no doubt the child had a maid sent to take care of it, but she, like a careless jade, was taken up perhaps with some fellow that had met her, and so the poor baby wandered till it fell into my hands.

However, I did the child no harm; I did not so much as fright it, for I had a great many tender thoughts about me yet and did nothing but what, as I may say, mere necessity drove me to" (199).

Message edited by its author, Jul 26, 2009, 7:32pm.

8
gilead marilynne robinson







"early one morning a few years ago, as I was walking up to the church. There was a young couple strolling along half a block ahead of me. The sun had come up brilliantly after a heavy rain, and the trees were glistening and very wet. On some impulse, plain exuberance, I suppose, the fellow jumped up and caught hold of a branch, and a storm of luminous water came pouring down on the two of them, and they laughed and took off running, the girl sweeping water off her

hair and her dress as if she were a little bit disgusted, but she wasn't. It was a beautiful thing to see, like something from a myth. I don't know why I thought of that now, except perhaps because it is easy to believe in such moments that water was made primarily for blessing, and only secondarily for growing vegetables or doing the wash. I wish I had paid more attention to it. My list of regrets may seem unusual, but who can know that they are, really. This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it" (27-28).

Message edited by its author, May 27, 2009, 4:54pm.

9
thus spoke zarathustra friedrich nietzsche







"It is difficult to live with people because it is so difficult to be silent" (90).

Message edited by its author, Jun 5, 2009, 5:20pm.

10
snow flower and the secret fan lisa see







"Weren't my lily feet the source of all my pains and gains?" (223).

Message edited by its author, Jun 5, 2009, 5:15pm.

11
the toughest indian in the world sherman alexie







"Crazy Horse didn't need Tums" (126).

Message edited by its author, Jun 26, 2009, 8:59am.

12
das kapital volume one karl marx







"The coal burnt under the boiler vanishes without leaving a trace; so too the oil with which the axles of wheels are greased. Dye-stuffs and other auxiliary substances also vanish, but re-appear in the properties of the product. The raw material forms the substance of the product, but only after it has undergone a change in its form. Hence raw material and auxiliary substances lose the independent form with which they entered into the labour process. It is otherwise with the actual instruments of labour. Tools, machines, factory buildings and containers are only of use in the labour process as long as they keep their original shape, and are ready each morning to enter into it in the same form. And just as during their lifetime, that is to say, during the labour process, they retain their shape independently of the product, so too after their death. The mortal remains of machines, tools, workshops, etc., always continue to lead an existence distinct from that of the product they helped to turn out. If we now consider the case of any instrument of labour during the whole period of its service, from the day of its entry into the workshop to the day of its banishment to the lumber room, we find that during this period its use-value has been completely consumed, and therefore its exchange-value completely transferred to the product. For instance, if a spinning machine lasts for ten years, it is plain that during that working period its total value is gradually transferred to the product of the ten years. The lifetime of an instrument of labor is thus spent in the repetition of a greater or lesser number of similar operations. The instrument suffers the same fate as the man. Every day brings a man twenty-four hours nearer to his grave, although no one can tell accurately, merely by looking at a man, how many days he has still to travel on that road. This difficulty, however, does not prevent life insurance companies from using the theory of averages to draw very accurate, and what is more, very profitable conclusions about the length of a man's life. So it is with the instruments of labour" (311-312).

Message edited by its author, Jul 26, 2009, 7:32pm.

13
the inheritance of loss kiran desai







"What was a country but the idea of it? She thought of India as a concept, a hope, or a desire. How often could you attack it before it crumbled? To undo something took practice; it was a dark art and they were perfecting it. With each argument the next would be easier, would become a compulsive act, and like wrecking a marriage, it would be impossible to keep away, to stop picking at wounds even if the wounds were your own" (259).

Message edited by its author, May 27, 2009, 4:54pm.

14
song of solomon toni morrison







"Now, after more than a dozen years, he was getting tired of her. Her eccentricities were no longer provocative and the stupefying ease with which he had gotten and stayed between her legs had changed from the great good fortune he'd considered it, to annoyance at her refusal to make him hustle for it, work for it, do something difficult for it. He didn't even have to pay for it. It was so free, so abundant, it had lost its fervor. There was no excitement, no galloping of blood in his neck or his heart at the thought of her.

She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?

Perhaps the end of the year was a good time to call it off. It wasn't going anywhere and it was keeping him lazy, like a pampered honey bear who had only to stick out his paw for another scoop, and so had lost the agility of the tree-climbers, the bee-fighters, but not the recollection of how thrilling the search had been" (102).

Message edited by its author, Jun 5, 2009, 5:20pm.

15
art history marilyn stokstad







"In April 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, German pilots flying for Spanish fascist leader Franco targeted the Basque city of Guernica. This act, the world's first bombing of civilians, killed more than 1600 people and shocked the world. The Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, living in Paris at the time, reacted to the massacre by painting _Guernica_, a stark, hallucinatory nightmare that became a powerful symbol of the brutality of war.

Picasso, focusing on the victims, restricted his palette to black, gray, and white--the tones of the newspaper photographs that publicized the atrocity. Expressively distorted women, one holding a dead child and another trapped in a burning house, wail in desolation at the carnage. A screaming horse, an image of betrayed innocence, represents the suffering Spanish Republic, while a bull symbolizes either Franco or Spain. An electric light and a woman holding a lantern suggest Picasso's desire to reveal the event in all its horror.

During World War II, a Nazi officer showed Picasso a reproduction of _Guernica_ and asked, "Is that you who did that?" Picasso is said to have replied, "No, it is you" (1059).

Message edited by its author, Aug 6, 2009, 1:53pm.

16
peony in love lisa see







"'Why is it,' she asked Li Shu, 'that so many women's thoughts have been like flowers in the wind, drifting off with the current and vanishing without a trace?'" (250).

Message edited by its author, Jun 5, 2009, 5:16pm.

Wonderful ancedote about Picasso! If the subject is more than a passing interest, do consider Picasso's War a five-star read.

thank you

i'll check that out

17
brick lane monica ali







"Only his eyes were unhappy. What are we doing here, they said, what are we doing on this round, jolly face?" (28).

Message edited by its author, Jun 6, 2009, 9:11pm.

18
the perfect crime jean baudrillard







"The great philosophical question used to be 'Why is there something rather than nothing?" Today, the real question is: "Why is there nothing rather than something?"

The absence of things from themselves, the fact that they do not take place though they appear to do so, the fact that everything withdraws behind its own appearance and is, therefore, never identical with itself, is the material illusion of the world. And, deep down, this remains the great riddle, the enigma which fills us with dread and from which we protect ourselves with the formal illusion of truth.

On pain of dread, we have to decipher the world and therefore wipe out the initial illusoriness of the world. We can bear neither the void, nor the secret, nor pure appearance. And why should we decipher it instead of letting its illusion shine out as such, in all its glory? Well, the fact that we cannot bear its enigmatic character is also an enigma, also part of the enigma. Is it part of

the world that we cannot bear either the illusion of the world or pure appearance. We would be no better at coping with radical truth and transparency, if these existed" (2-3).

Message edited by its author, Aug 6, 2009, 1:50pm.

19
delicate edible birds lauren groff







"I have found myself watching the bare trees move on my glistening walls, thinking of Buenos Aires. Many times in my life I longed to return to that city, and though I could have gone a dozen times, a hundred, for some reason I never did. I probably never will. I find myself wondering

now, in the shining, expensive desert of my apartment during this endless winter, if that city I loved so dearly could have stayed the same, after all this time. If the tiny old woman still sits in the park on her bench, silently weeping into her hands. If that old man still presses his wizened cheek to the bosoms of plump brides, humming tangos in the gaslit streets. If the jungle-smelling wind carries great flights of butterflies into the streets. If, in the restaurants, the waiters are still elegant and the steaks still glisten thick as tongues; if there are those great rivers, those oceans of wine to dizzy us, to wash our bodies sweet again" (217-218).

Message edited by its author, Jun 26, 2009, 8:59am.

20
das kapital: volume II karl marx







"It is a pure tautology to say that crises are provoked by a lack of effective demand or effective consumption. The capitalist system does not recognize any forms of consumer other than those who can pay, if we exclude the consumption of paupers and swindlers. The fact that commodities are unsaleable means no more than that no effective buyers have been found for them, i.e. no consumers (no matter whether the commodities are ultimately sold to meet the needs of productive or individual consumption). If the attempt is made to give this tautology the semblance of greater profundity, by the statement that the working class receives too small a portion of its own product, and that the evil would be remedied if it received a bigger share, i.e. if its wages rose, we need only note that crises are always prepared by a period in which

wages generally rise, and the working class actually does receive a greater share in the part of the annual product destined for consumption. From the standpoint of these advocates of sound and 'simple' (!) common sense, such periods should rather avert the crisis. It thus appears that capitalist production involves certain conditions independent of people's good or bad intentions, which permit the relative prosperity of the working class only temporarily, and moreover always as a harbinger of crisis" (486-487).

Message edited by its author, Jul 26, 2009, 7:33pm.

21
the years virginia woolf







"A long row of cars and carriages was drawn up by the kerb. Striped umbrellas were open over the little round tables where people were already sitting, waiting for their tea. Waitresses were hurrying in and out with trays; the Season had begun. The scene was very gay.

A lady, fashionably dressed with a purple feather dipping down on one side of her hat, sat there sipping an ice. The sun dappled the table and gave her a curious look of transparency, as if she were caught in a net of light; as if she were composed of lozenges of floating colours. Martin half thought that he knew her, he half raised his hat. But she sat there looking in front of her; sipping her ice. No, he thought; he did not know her, and he stopped for a moment to light his pipe. What would the world be, he said to himself--he was still thinking of the fat man brandishing his arm--without 'I' in it? He lit the match. He looked at the flame that had become almost invisible in the sun. He stood for a second drawing at his pipe. Sara had walked on. She too was netted with floating lights from between the leaves. A primal innocence seemed to brood over the scene. The birds made a fitful sweet chirping in the branches; the roar of London encircled the open space in a ring of distant but complete sound. The pink and white chestnut blossoms rode up and down as the branches moved in the breeze. The sun dappling the leaves gave everything a curious look of insubstantiality as if it were broken into separate points of light. He too, himself, seemed dispersed. His mind for a moment was a blank. Then he roused himself, threw away his match, and caught up Sally" (229).

Message edited by its author, Jun 6, 2009, 9:12pm.

22
the canterbury tales geoffrey chaucer







For o thyng, sires, saufly dar I seye,
That freendes everych oother moot obeye,
If they wol longe holden compaignye.
Love wol not been constreyned by maistrye.
Whan maistrie comth, the God of Love anon
Beteth his wynges, and farewel, he is gon!
Love is a thyng as any spirit free.
Wommen, of kynde, desiren libertee,
And nat to be constreyned as a thral;
And so doon men, if I sooth seyen shal.

ll. 761-770 (of fragment V)

Message edited by its author, Jul 26, 2009, 7:33pm.

23
the abstinence teacher tom perrotta







“The ex-gay man—he introduced himself simply as ‘Troy’—was the most problematic speaker for Tim, and not only because there didn’t seem to be anything ‘ex’ about him. Tim understood that it was unfair to stereotype, but he was pretty sure he could recognize a gay guy when he saw one. It wasn’t just Troy’s effeminate voice, or his exaggerated gestures, or his suspiciously buff body, or even the flirtatious way he put his hands on his hips, cocked his head to one side,

and said, ‘People, I am sooo not proud of my behavior.’ Any one of those things could have been pure coincidence, but taken together, the whole package just seemed to scream, ‘I’m still gay!’ Tim wondered how Mrs. Troy managed to convince herself that everything was on the up-and-up when she stood before him in a filmy negligee and saw the look of profound indifference on his face, unless she happened to be a recovering lesbian herself, in which case she was probably more relieved than anything else.

Most of the time, Tim did his best to be a good Christian and toe the biblical line, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get himself all worked up about the sin of homosexuality. It just didn’t seem that bad to him, certainly not worth banishing someone to hell for, and probably not worth all the time and energy Pastor Dennis and lots of other people spent obsessing about it, especially since Jesus didn’t have a single word to say on the subject in the Gospels.

It seemed like a glaring omission, considering that Jesus had a fair amount to say on other points of sexual morality, including one that was particularly inconvenient for Tim: ‘Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery.’ You couldn’t get much clearer than that, and yet Pastor Dennis hadn’t objected to Tim’s marriage to Carrie, far from it. He’d just let the whole remarriage-adultery thing slide, tempering God’s harsh law with a dose of human compassion. Tim couldn’t help feeling like gay people deserved a similar break, a recognition that a choice between a life of sin and a life of celibacy was no choice at all” (140-141).

Message edited by its author, Jun 6, 2009, 9:13pm.

24
revolutionary road richard yates







"Who could be frightened in as wide and bright, as clean and quiet a house as this?" (30).

Message edited by its author, Jun 6, 2009, 9:13pm.

25
strategy of deception paul virilio







“Like the creation in recent years of these curious ‘ethics committees’ that are supposed to convince public opinion of the harmlessness of the experimental sciences which have today largely been diverted from their proper purposes. Made up haphazardly from technical and scientific experts, a few rare ‘moral’ personalities and, most recently, representatives of the big corporations, the recommendations of these makeshift institutions have, as we know, long been rendered ridiculous by the research institutes and major companies of the world’s most industrialized (G8) countries switching over within a few years first from chemicals to pharmaceuticals, then on to biotechnologies—those same eight countries which—once again substituting themselves for the UN!—concocted the peace plan presented to Milosevic.

Similarly, when our new ‘judicial laboratories’ claim to legitimate their existence by reference to an ethic drawn from the great Nuremberg trials (25 November

1945-October 1946), the comparison seems particularly inappropriate. To appreciate this, one has simply to recall that during that unprecedented trial, in which twenty-four members of the Nazi party and eight organizations from Hitler’s Germany were judged by an international military tribunal, the charges related to war crimes and, most importantly, to conspiracy against humanity. This was a remarkably precise charge, since it indicated that, above and beyond the blatant massacres on the battlefields and the devastation of the bombed cities, crimes of a new kind had been conceived and committed in the secrecy of the deportation camps of total war—and that they were committed, let it be noted, by way of the reform of a German judicial system which was already in decay. This was the ‘terrible secret’—the secret of the ‘biological disappearance of millions of men, women, and children; millions of civilians who believed they were still protected by the rule of law, being unaware that it was no longer in force.

And with it went a new ‘science of man’ in which not only the nominal identity of individuals was denied, but their anthropological identity, their belonging to ‘humanity,’ the living body of the human being

becoming an object of experimentation and a raw material in a period of extreme shortages. But was not the peaceable, bureaucratic planning of the ‘final solution’, which Hannah Arendt discovered during the Adolf Eichmann trial, that of the new anthropophagy announced sixty years earlier by Nietzsche?

On 29 June 1999, a file bearing red swastika seals went on display at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. This was said to be the original of the Nuremberg Laws, introducing, among other things, the code of discrimination against the Jews. The document, we are told, had been recovered by General Patton in April 1945 from the coffers of a little Bavarian town near Nuremberg. During the advance of the American Third Army in Europe, the general had been a witness: everything contained in germ in that file had become a reality. When he returned to the United States, Patton had consequently entrusted the document to friends, the Huttingtons, the owners of a small library and gallery not far from Los Angeles, recommending that they lock it up in their safe and keep it hidden there. Subsequently, the various trustees of the library complied with the general’s orders and the ‘terrible secret’ was thus scrupulously kept for more than half a century.

At precisely the point when experimental tribunals were being set up with the aim of redefining new ‘human rights’ on the planet, the opening of this Pandora’s box—

in which not even Hope remained—puts one in mind of the reactivation of a dangerous substance…

At a time when plans are being hatched for the ‘industrialization of living matter’ and a new eugenics is secretly being elaborated, this time promoting not the natural, but the artificial, selection of the human race.

And when, right in the middle of the resolution of a ‘humanitarian conflict,’ we can already see the first fruits of the post-war period on the front pages of our newspapers, with the ravings of the gurus of historical anthropophagy, announcing that, thanks to ‘the open-ended character of modern natural science,’ biotechnology will provide us with the tools which will ‘allow us to accomplish what social engineers of the past failed to do. At that point, we will have definitively finished human history because we will have abolished human beings as such. And then a new post-human history will begin.’” (79-82).

Message edited by its author, Oct 19, 2009, 8:56am.

26
volupte charles-augustin sainte-beuve







"In any soul that began living early, the past has deposited its debris in successive tombs which the law on the surface can consign to oblivion. But as soon as you plunge into your heart to scrutinize the ages, you become apprehensive of what it contains. There are so many worlds within us!" (19).

Message edited by its author, Jun 6, 2009, 9:14pm.

27
a dance to the music of time: first movement anthony powell







“The men at work at the corner of the street had made a kind of camp for themselves, where, marked out by tripods hung with red hurricane-lamps, an abyss in the road led down to a network of subterranean drain-pipes. Gathered round the bucket of coke that burned in front of the shelter, several figures were swinging arms against bodies and rubbing hands together with large, pantomimic gestures: like comedians giving formal expression to the concept of extreme cold. One of them, a spare fellow in blue overalls, taller than the rest, with a jocular demeanour and long, pointed nose like that of a Shakespearean clown, suddenly stepped forward, and, as if performing a rite, cast some substance—apparently the remains of two kippers, loosely wrapped in newspaper—on the bright coals of the fire, causing flames to leap fiercely upward, smoke curling about in eddies of the north-east wind. As the dark fumes floated above the houses, snow began to fall gently from a dull sky, each flake giving a small hiss as it reached the bucket. The flames died down again; and the men, as if required observances were for the moment at an end, all turned away from the fire, lowering themselves into the pit, or withdrawing to the shadows of their tarpaulin shelter. The grey, undecided flakes continued to come down, though not heavily, while a harsh odour, bitter and gaseous, penetrated the air. The day was drawing in.

For some reason, the sight of snow descending on fire always makes me think of the ancient world—legionaries

in sheepskin warming themselves at a brazier: mountain altars where offerings glow between wintry pillars; centaurs with torches cantering beside a frozen sea—scattered, unco-ordinated shapes from a fabulous past, infinitely removed from life; and yet bringing with them memories of things real and imagined. These classical projections, and something in the physical attitudes of the men themselves as they turned from the fire, suddenly suggested Poussin’s scene in which the Seasons, hand in hand and facing outward, tread in rhythm to the notes of the lyre that the winged and naked greybeard plays. The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure: stepping slowly, methodically, sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving patterns to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance. Classical associations made me think, too, of days at school, where so many forces, hitherto unfamiliar, had become in due course uncompromisingly clear.

As winter advanced in that river valley, mist used to rise in late afternoon and spread over the flooded grass; until the house and all the outskirts of the town were enveloped in opaque, chilly vapour, tinted like cigar-smoke. The house looked on to other tenement-like structures, experiments in architectural insignificance, that intruded upon a central concentration of buildings, commanding and antiquated, laid out in a quadrilateral, though irregular, style. Silted-up residues of the years smouldered uninterruptedly—and not without melancholy—in the maroon brickwork of these medieval closes: beyond the cobbles and archways of which

(in a more northerly direction) memory also brooded, no less enigmatic and inconsolable, among water-meadows and avenues of trees: the sombre demands of the past becoming at times almost suffocating in their insistence.

Running westward in front of the door, a metalled road continued into open country of a coarser sort than these gothic parklands—fields: railway aches: a gas-works: and then more fields—a kind of steppe where the climate seemed at all times extreme: sleet: wind: or sultry heat; a wide territory, loosely enclosed by inflexions of the river, over which the smells of the gasometer, recalled perhaps by the fumes of the coke fire, would come and go with imminent strength. Earlier in the month droves of boys could be seen drifting in bands, and singly, along this trail, migrating tribes of the region, for ever on the move: trudging into exile until the hour when damp clouds began once more to overwhelm the red houses, and to contort or veil crenellations and pinnacles beyond. Then, with the return return of the mist, these nomads would reappear again, straggling disconsolately back to their deserted habitations”
(1-3).

Message edited by its author, Jun 5, 2009, 5:22pm.

28
between the acts virginia woolf







“‘The forecast,’ said Mr. Oliver, turning the pages till he found it, ‘says: Variable winds; fair average temperature; rain at times.’

He put down the paper, and they all looked at the sky to see whether the sky obeyed the meteorologist. Certainly the weather was variable. It was green in the garden; grey the next. Here came the sun—an illimitable rapture of joy, embracing every flower, every leaf. Then in compassion it withdrew, covering its face, as if it forebode to look on human suffering. There was a fecklessness, a lack of symmetry and order in the clouds, as they thinned and thickened. Was it their own law, or no law, they obeyed? Some were wisps of white hair merely. One, high up, very distant, had hardened to golden alabaster; was made of immortal marble. Beyond that was blue, pure blue, black blue; blue that had never filtered down; that had escaped registration. It never fell as sun, shadow, or rain upon the world, but disre-
garded the little coloured balls of earth entirely. No flower felt it; no field; no garden.

Mrs. Swithin’s eyes glazed as she looked at it. Isa thought her gaze was fixed because she saw God there, God on His throne. But as a shadow fell next moment on the garden Mrs. Swithin loosed and lowered her fixed look and said:

“It’s very unsettled. It’ll rain, I’m afraid. We can only pray,” she added, and fingered her crucifix.

“And provide umbrellas,” said her brother (16-17).

Message edited by its author, Jun 6, 2009, 9:15pm.

29
the sea john banville







"What a little vessel of sadness we are, sailing in this muffled silence through the autumn dark" (53).

Message edited by its author, Jun 15, 2009, 10:53pm.

30
absurdistan gary shteyngart







"Tell me, please, who in their right mind circumcises a fat eighteen-year-old man-child in an operating room reeking of mildew and fried rice?" (34)

Message edited by its author, Aug 6, 2009, 1:55pm.

31
middlesex jeffrey eugenides







"Everyone struggles against despair, but it always wins in the end. It has to. It's the thing that lets us say goodbye" (524).

Message edited by its author, Jul 1, 2009, 10:12pm.

32
life of pi yann martel







"The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn't that make life a story?" (302)

Message edited by its author, Jun 26, 2009, 8:53am.

33
atomised michel houellebecq








"Tenderness is a deeper instinct than seduction which is why it is so difficult to give up hope" (61).

Message edited by its author, Jul 3, 2009, 12:04pm.

34
an american tragedy theodore dreiser







"There are moments when in connection with the sensitively imaginative or morbidly anachronistic--the mentality assailed and the same not of any great strength and the problem confronting it of sufficient force and complexity--the reason not actually toppling from its throne, still totters or is warped or shaken--the mind befuddled to the extent that for the time being, at least, unreason or disorder and mistaken or erroneous counsel would appear to hold against all else. In such instances the will and the courage confronted by some great difficulty which it can neither master nor endure, appears in some to recede in precipitate flight, leaving only panic and temporary unreason in its wake" (681).

Message edited by its author, Jul 26, 2009, 7:33pm.

35
let us now praise famous men james agee







"No doubt we have the ‘right’ to own and use the earth as seems to us best if we can: but we might be thought to qualify a little better for the job if it ever occurred to us in the least to qualify or question that right.
Even what seems to us our present soundest and most final ideas of justice are noticeably cavalier and provincial and self-centered. What would we have to think of hogs who, having managed to secure justice among themselves, still and continuously and without the undertone of a thought to the contrary exploited every other creature and material of the planet, and who wore in their eyes, perfectly undisturbed by any second consideration, the high and holy light of science or religion.
Sure, these things are simple, so simple, God forbid, that they sound merely whimsical. They are, though, literal facts. Our carelessness of them is literal fact. Any child should be able to grasp them. To grasp such facts, to try to understand them and their application would seem as primal and as relevant to and influential upon the rest of what we are and do as breathing. Our own inability to grasp them or our negligence, which amounts to the same thing, does not qualify us very highly to handle more difficult facts which are of central importance at very least (to remain provincial) to the good of the human race.

I am a Communist by sympathy and conviction. But it does not appear (just for one thing) that Communists have recognized or in any case made anything serious of the sure fact that the persistence of what once was insufficiently described as Pride, a mortal sin, can quite as coldly and inevitably damage and wreck the human race as the most total power of ‘Greed’ ever could: and that socially anyhow, the most dangerous form of pride is neither arrogance nor humility, but its mild, common denominator form, complacency.

I am under no delusion that communism can be achieved overnight, if ever; and one’s flexibility or patience toward what seem obvious occasions of mishandling should be as considerable as one’s strictness and fearlessness in facing what seem to be the facts of those failures. The fact remains that artists, for instance, should be capable of figuring the situation out to the degree that they would refuse the social eminence and the high pay they are given in Soviet Russia. The setting up of an aristocracy of superior workers is no good sign, either. Certainly, beyond denial, we, human beings, at our best are scarcely entered into the post-diaper stage of our development, and it is common sense to treat us what we are, and would be as harmful and criminal as it would be foolish to treat ourselves as what we aren’t. But it would be bright if the treatment caused us consistently to reach out and grow: you don’t clamber out of infantilism by retreating, or staying, or being ordered to retreat, into what any average fool can see is the bedwetting stage.
Certainly we don’t know now, and never will, all of even the human truth. But we may as well admit we know a few things, and take full advantage of them. It is probably never really wise, or even necessary, or anything better than harmful, to educate a human being toward a good end by telling him lies" (220-221).

Message edited by its author, Aug 6, 2009, 2:48pm.

36
the waves virginia woolf







"'I have torn off the whole of May and June,' said Susan, 'and twenty days of July. I have torn them off and screwed them up so that they no longer exist, save as a weight in my side. They have been crippled days, like moths with shrivelled wings unable to fly. There are only eight days left. In eight days' time I shall get out of the train and stand on the platform at six-twenty-five. Then my freedom will unfurl, and all these restrictions that wrinkle and shrivel--hours and order and discipline, and being here and there exactly at the right moment--will crack asunder. Out the day will spring, as I open the carriage-door and see my father in his old hat and gaiters. I shall tremble. I shall burst into tears. The next morning I shall get up at dawn. I shall let myself out by the kitchen door. I shall walk on the moor. The great horses of the phantom riders will thunder behind me and stop suddenly. I shall see the swallow skim the grass. I shall throw myself on a bank by the river and watch the fish slip in and out among the reeds. The palms of my hands will be printed with pine-needles. I shall there unfold and take out whatever it is I have made here; something hard. For something has grown in me here, through the winters and summers, on staircases, in bedrooms, I do not want, as Jinny wants, to be admired. I do not want people, when I come in, to look up with admiration. I want to give, to be given, and solitude in in which to unfold my possessions” (37).

Message edited by its author, Aug 30, 2009, 2:06pm.

37
when you are engulfed in flames david sedaris







"when you're in love nothing is so abstract or horrible that it can't be thought of as cute" (213).

Message edited by its author, Aug 18, 2009, 11:36am.

38
hiroshima: three witnesses hara tamiki/ ota yoko/ toge sankichi







“The morning sun began to shine on the tenements along the river--that is, on the small partitioned-off individual plots lines up along the hedge. Long ago I had seen Gorky‘s _The Lower Depths_ on the stage; here was a group exactly like the people of that slum society, like the crowds of beggars, cripples, and the severely ill that appear in every work by Russian writers. They filled up the riverbed so completely you couldn‘t see the sand.
The tide had gone out again, and the curtain had already risen on death. People had died lying face down; people had had died face up; people had died sitting on the grass. The people walking dazedly about were all in rags and tatters, hair unkempt, faces hard; only their gimlet eyes gleamed.
The women were an ugly sight. A girl was walking about naked, with nothing on her feet. A young girl had not one strand of hair. An old woman had both shoulders dislocated, and her arms hung limply. Occasionally someone walked by who had neither injuries nor burns, and people would turn and stare in astonishment” (199).

Message edited by its author, Aug 6, 2009, 3:01pm.

39
the crazy iris and other stories of the atomic aftermath kenzaburo oe








"People seem to trust to the impression they get from the black ribbon as they stand in front of the paintings that have lost all color" (125).

Message edited by its author, Aug 18, 2009, 11:33am.

40
the monsters of templeton lauren groff







"Amazing thing, fiction. Tells you more, sometimes, about the writer than the writer can tell you about himself in any memoir" (245).

Message edited by its author, Oct 14, 2009, 2:31pm.

41
the pianist wladyslaw szpilman








"The first hard frosts came in the middle of December. When I went out looking for water on the night of 13 December, I found it frozen everywhere. I fetched a kettle and a pan from a flat near the back entrance of the building that the fire had spared, and returned to my loft. I shaved some ice from the contents of the pan and put it in my mouth, but it did not quench my thirst. I thought of another idea: I got under my eiderdown and put the pan of ice on my naked stomach. After a while the ice began to thaw, and I had water. I did the same over the next few days, for the temperature remained freezing.

Christmas came, and then the New Year, 1945: the sixth Christmas and New Year celebrations of the war, and the worst I had known. I was not in any condition to celebrate. I lay in the dark, listening to the stormy wind tearing at the roof sheeting and the damaged gutters that dangled down the walls of buildings, blowing down the furniture in those flats that were not entirely destroyed. In the intervals between the gusts that kept howling around the ruins I heard the squeaking and rustling of mice or even rats running back and forth in the attic. Sometimes they scurried over my eiderdown, and when I was asleep they ran over my face, scratching me with their claws as they passed swiftly by. In my mind, I went over every Christmas before and during the war. At first I had a home, parents, two sisters and a brother. Then we had no home of ouw own any more, but we were together. Later I was alone, but surrounded by other people. And now I was lonelier, I supposed, than anyone else in the world. Even Defoe's creation, Robinson Crusoe, the prototype of the ideal solitary, could hope to meet another human being. Crusoe cheered himself by thinking that such a thing could happen any day, and it kept him going. But if any of the people now around me came near I would need to run for it and hide in mortal terror. I had to be alone, entirely alone, if I wanted to live" (181-182).

Message edited by its author, Aug 29, 2009, 1:07pm.

42
a dance to the music of time: second movement anthony powell







“A future marriage, or a past one, may be investigated and explained in terms of writing by one of its parties, but it is doubtful whether an existing marriage can ever be described directly in the first person and convey a sense of reality. Even those writers who suggest some of the substance of married life best, stylise heavily, losing the subtlety of the relationship at the price of a few accurately recorded, but isolated, aspects. To think at all objectively about one‘s own marriage is impossible, while a balanced view of other people‘s marriage is almost equally hard to achieve with so much information available, so little to be believed. Objectivity is not, of course, everything in writing; but even casting objectively aside, the difficulties of presenting marriage are inordinate. Its forms are at once so varied, yet so constant, providing a kaleidoscope, the colours of which are always changing, always the same. The moods of a love affair, the contradictions of friendship, the jealousy of business partners, the fellow feeling of opposed commanders in total war, these are all in their way to be charted. Marriage, partaking of such--and a thousand more--dual antagonisms and participations, finally defies definition” (97).

Message edited by its author, Oct 9, 2009, 1:20pm.

43
st lucy's home for girls raised by wolves karen russell







"Jeanette spiffed her penny loafers until her very shoes seemed to gloat" (232).

Message edited by its author, Sep 21, 2009, 7:26pm.

44
the absolutely true diary of a part-time indian sherman alexie







"Every book is a mystery. And if you read all the books ever written, it's like you've read one giant mystery. And no matter how much you learn, you just keep on learning there is so much more you need to learn" (97).

Message edited by its author, Sep 23, 2009, 4:04pm.

45
say you're one of them uwem akpan







"My mind is no longer mine; it's doing things on its own" (351).

Message edited by its author, Oct 2, 2009, 9:44am.

46
orlando virginia woolf







"He was describing, as all young poets are for ever describing, nature, and in order to match the shade of green precisely he looked (and here he showed more audacity than

most) at the thing itself, which happened to be a laurel bush growing beneath the window. After that, of course, he could write no more. Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces. The shade of green Orlando now saw spoilt his rhyme and split his metre. Moreover, nature has tricks of her own. Once look out of a window at bees among flowers, at a yawning dog, at the sun setting, once think "how many more suns shall I see set," etc., etc. (the thought is too well known to be worth writing out) and one drops the pen, takes one's cloak, strides out of the room, and catches one's foot on a painted chest as one does so. For Orlando was a trifle clumsy" (13-14).

Message edited by its author, Oct 14, 2009, 2:26pm.

47
self yann martel







"Memory is a glue: it attaches you to everything, even to what you don't like" (100).

Message edited by its author, Oct 17, 2009, 3:05pm.

48
open sky paul virilio







"Whether we like it or not, for each and every one of us there is now a split in the representation of the World and so in its _reality_. A split between activity and interactivity, presence and telepresence, existence and tele-existence.

Faced with the _stereoscopic_ nature of a reality divided between optics and optoelectronics, acoustics and electroacoustics, touch and teletactility, we have been given notice to quit our customary ways of seeing and thinking, in order to apprehend a new kind of 'relief' that even goes as far as undermining the practical usefulness of the notion of _horizon_ and, with it, the 'perspective' that previously allowed us to recognize ourselves _here and now._ All this has come about because the once unique source of 'light,' and so of 'reality,' of bygone days has itself been split in two: the (direct) shade of the sun's rays or of the electric lamp is now complemented by (indirect) 'shadow areas' of the lack of emission of electronic signals, _telesurveillance_ suddenly springing up and supplanting the illusion of things, the ordinary observer's seeing _with his own eyes_"
(44).

Message edited by its author, Oct 26, 2009, 10:13pm.

49
a mercy toni morrison







"We never shape the world she says. The world shapes us" (83).

Message edited by its author, Oct 26, 2009, 10:04pm.

50
jacob's room virginia woolf







Let us consider letters--how they come at breakfast, and at night, with their yellow stamps and their green stamps, immortalized by the postmark--for to see one’s own envelope on another’s table is to realize how soon deeds sever and become alien. Then at least the power of the mind to quit the body is manifest, and perhaps we fear or hate or wish annihilated this phantom of ourselves, lying on the table. Still, there are letters that merely say how dinner’s at seven; others ordering coal; making appointments. The hand in them is scarcely perceptible, let alone the voice or the scowl. Ah, but when the post knocks and the letter comes always the miracle seems repeated--speech attempted. Venerable are letters, infinitely brave, forlorn, and lost.

Life would split asunder without them. “Come to tea, come to dinner, what’s the truth of the story? have you heard the news? life in the capital is gay; the Russian dancers….” These are our stays and props. These lace our days together and make of life a perfect globe. And yet, and yet…when we go to dinner, when pressing finger-tips we hope to meet someone soon, a doubt insinuates itself; is this the way to spend our days? the rare, the limited, so soon dealt out to us--drinking tea? dining out? And the notes accumulate. And the telephones ring. And everywhere we go wires and tubes surround us to carry the voices that try to penetrate before the last card is dealt and the days are over. “Try to penetrate,” for as we lift the cup, shake the hand, express the hope, something whispers, Is this all? Can I never know, share, be certain? Am I doomed all my days to write letters, send voices, which fall upon the tea-table, fade upon the passage, making appointments, while life dwindles, to come and dine? Yet letters are venerable; and the telephone

valiant, for the journey is a lonely one, and if bound together by notes and telephones we went in company, perhaps--who knows?--we might talk by the way.

Well, people have tried. Byron wrote letters. So did Cowper. For centuries the writing-desk has contained sheets fit precisely for the communications of friends. Masters of language, poets of long ages, have turned from the sheet that endures to the sheet that perishes, pushing aside the tea-tray, drawing close to the fire (for letters are written when the dark presses round a bright red cave), and addressed themselves to the task of reaching, touching, penetrating the individual heart. Were it possible! But words have been used too often; touched and turned, and left exposed to the dust of the street. The words we seek hang close to the tree. We come at dawn and find them sweet beneath the leaf”

(96-97).

Message edited by its author, Nov 5, 2009, 12:00pm.

51
too much happiness alice munro







"It almost seemed as if there must be some random and of course unfair thrift in the emotional housekeeping of the world, if the great happiness--however temporary, however flimsy--of one person could come out of the great unhappiness of another" (61).

Message edited by its author, Nov 9, 2009, 4:26pm.

52
blindness jose saramago








"if, before every action, we were to begin by weighing up the consequences, thinking about them in earnest, first the immediate consequences, then the probable, then the possible, then the imaginable ones, we should never move beyond the point where our first thought brought us to a halt. The good and the evil resulting from our words and deeds go on apportioning themselves, one assumes in a reasonably uniform and balanced way, throughout all the days to follow, including those endless days, when we shall not be here to find out, to congratulate ourselves or ask for pardon, indeed there are those who claim that this is the much-talked-of immortality" (78).

Message edited by its author, Nov 11, 2009, 2:22pm.

53
olive kitteridge elizabeth strout







"People know exactly who loves them, and how much--Olive believed this" (145).

Message edited by its author, Nov 20, 2009, 11:47am.

54
minima moralia theodor adorno