lettersfromthelighthouse

[lettersfromthelighthouse]

I should make a list of random books featuring unexpected quotations from Moby Dick.

Today: Julia Armfield's Our Wives Under the Sea.

Yesterday: John Langan's The Fisherman.

#I'm sure I have more #(besides the obvious The Terror) #technically this is #currently reading #about my reading habits

[lettersfromthelighthouse]

nothing gives me the same dopamine hit of shopping like going to the library and walking out with an armful of new books

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[lettersfromthelighthouse]

The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others – who are, after all, deceived easily enough; has nothing to do with reputation, which, as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara, is something people with courage can do without. To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable documentary that details one’s failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for every screening.

Joan Didion, On Self-Respect, 1961, in: Slouching Towards Bethlehem

#booklr #adultbooklr #adult booklr #quotation #queue #Joan Didion #Slouching Towards Bethlehem

[lettersfromthelighthouse]

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[lettersfromthelighthouse]

Although to be driven back upon oneself is an uneasy affair at best, rather like trying to cross a border with borrowed credentials, it seems to me now the one condition necessary to the beginnings of real self-respect. Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception.

Joan Didion, On Self-Respect, 1961, in: Slouching Towards Bethlehem

#booklr #adultbooklr #adult booklr #quotation #queue #Joan Didion #Slouching Towards Bethlehem

[lettersfromthelighthouse]

Rearranged this bookshelf yesterday… from ml.books

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[lettersfromthelighthouse]

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.

Joan Didion, On Keeping a Notebook, 1966, in: Slouching Towards Bethlehem

#booklr #adultbooklr #adult booklr #queue #quotation #Joan Didion #Slouching Towards Bethlehem

[lettersfromthelighthouse]

currently reading//

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[lettersfromthelighthouse]

So the point of my keeping a notebook has never been, nor is it now, to have an accurate factual record of what I have been doing or thinking. That would be a different impulse entirely, an instinct for reality which I sometimes envy but do not possess.

Joan Didion, On Keeping a Notebook, 1966, in: Slouching Towards Bethlehem

#booklr #adultbooklr #adult booklr #queue #quotation #Joan Didion #Slouching Towards Bethlehem

[lettersfromthelighthouse]

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[lettersfromthelighthouse]

Not bookish, but I can't boop anyone from this blog because it's a sideblog, so if you're getting a boop from @thiswaitingheart, this is why. ;)

#not like it's a secret either; I think the link is in the blog description #but this blog has way more followers that are - I believe - mainly here for books #blog maintenance

[lettersfromthelighthouse]

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down ever since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighfull with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.

Joan Didion, On Keeping a Notebook, 1966, in: Slouching Towards Bethlehem

#booklr #adultbooklr #adult booklr #quotation #queue #Joan Didion #Slouching Towards Bethlehem

[lettersfromthelighthouse]

2024 quarter one book haul!

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[lettersfromthelighthouse]

Quarter 1: January to March

In order of reading:

Petina Gappah - Out of Darkness, Shining Light ★★★★☆

Elif Batuman - The Idiot ★★★★★

Rutger Bregman - Humankind. A Hopeful History ★★★☆☆

Lydia Meyer - Die Zukunft ist nicht binär (library, not pictured) ★★☆☆☆.5

Joan Didion - The White Album ★★★★☆

Kübra Gümüşay - Sprache und Sein (library) ★★★☆☆.5

James Clear - Atomic Habits (ebook, library) ★☆☆☆☆.5

Mark Aurel - Selbstbetrachtungen (Meditations) ★★☆☆☆.5

Ludwig Tieck - Die verkehrte Welt ★★★☆☆

Mithu Sanyal - Identitti ★★☆☆☆.5

Lots of German titles, lots of non-fiction - most of which were a bit disappointing (especially considering how hyped some of them were on German bookstagram/the German book blogosphere).

(I don't think I'll repost the longer posts from my Wordpress blog here - the reviews are cross-posted anyway - but I'd like to keep some kind of record.)

#reviews will happen whenever I manage to actually turn my notes into coherent text #wrapup #read in 2024 #quarterly wrapup #about my reading habits #about my taste in books

[lettersfromthelighthouse]

JOMP Book Photo Challenge || February || 12 || Can't Read In Public

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[lettersfromthelighthouse]

Almost everyone notes that there is no “time” in Las Vegas, no night and no day and no past and no future (…); neither is there any logical sense of where one is. One is standing on a highway in the middle of a vast hostile desert looking at an eighty-foot sign which blinks “STARDUST” or “CAESAR’S PALACE.” Yes, but what does that explain? This geographical implausibility reinforces the sense that what happens there has no connection with “real” life; Nevada cities like Reno and Carson are ranch towns, Western towns, places behind which there is some historical imperative. But Las Vegas seems to exist only in the eye of the beholder.

Joan Didion, Marrying Absurd, 1967, in: Slouching Towards Bethlehem

#booklr #adultbooklr #adult booklr #quotation #queue #Joan Didion #Slouching Towards Bethlehem

[lettersfromthelighthouse]

Ok Paladin’s Faith may have turned my djinn kick into a demon one. I’ve heard mixed things about this one, but I’m excited to jump in.

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