Wander 〰
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2025 in Book Quotes
hey there👋 Thanks for stopping by~ This is the 5th consecutive year I’ve continued the tradition of reading (at least) a book a week! I stopped book counting this year to stay more aligned with the practice of enjoying books vs. quantifying them. I’ve continued Virtual Book Club (hovering around 100 members on a rolling…
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Review: Things in Nature Merely Grow
Book Specs 📖 One Sentence Synopsis🔖 Yiyun Li shares the tragic loss of her sons to suicide. Notes/Thoughts📝 “Quotes”🗣 “Fiction, one suspects, is tamer than life. “ “And yet life is still to be lived, inside tragedies, outside tragedies, and despite tragedies.” “The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; / not in silence, but…
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Review: One Hundred Years of Solitude
Book Specs 📖 One Sentence Synopsis🔖 Follow the tragedy of seven generations of the Buendia family as they repeat their histories, experiences, and passions. Notes/Thoughts📝 “Quotes”🗣 “Children inherit their parents’ madness” “He was weary of the uncertainty, of the vicoius circle of that eternal war that always found him in the same place, but always…
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Review: Elena Knows
Book Specs 📖 One Sentence Synopsis🔖 Elena, a mother with advanced Parkinson’s, investigates her daughter’s suicide. Notes/Thoughts📝 “Quotes”🗣 “She doesn’t have a timetable. Her time is measured in pills.” “Never isn’t a word hat applies to our species, there are so many things that we think applies to our species, there are so many things…
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Review: Written on Water
Book Specs 📖 One Sentence Synopsis🔖 Chang revisits the fragmentary memories of childhood and cultural influences (fashion, cinema, Peking Opera, etc. ) that shaped her life as a woman and writer in war time Shanghai and Hong Kong. Notes/Thoughts📝 “Quotes”🗣 “For people who are too shy to speak, clothes are a kind of language, a…
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Review: Braiding Sweetgrass
Book Specs 📖 One Sentence Synopsis🔖 Non clout chasing relationship advice from plants and living beings via indigenous lens. Notes/Thoughts📝 “Quotes”🗣 “Leave this place better than you found it.” “The land knows you even when you are lost.” “The questions scientists raised were not “Who are you? but What is it?” No one asked the…
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Review: On the Calculation of Volume (IV)
Book Specs 📖 One Sentence Synopsis🔖 See what happens when a bunch of people all get stuck on November 18th. Notes/Thoughts📝 “Quotes”🗣 “It is hard to know where something ends and where something begins. Or someone. Where a person starts or stops. Where the next begins.” “Perhaps that’s how it is: We are guests and…
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Review: Near to the Wild Heart
Book Specs 📖 One Sentence Synopsis🔖 Girl describes transition from childhood to loveless marriage through existentialist vignettes. Notes/Thoughts📝 “Quotes”🗣 “I can’t say who I am. that is to say, I know it all too well, but I can’t say it. More than anything, I’m afraid to say it, because the moment I try to speak…
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Review: Transcription
Book Specs 📖 One Sentence Synopsis🔖 Writer travels to interview mentally declining mentor in Providence during COVID; the resulting interview is constructed from memory in the absence of his phone. Notes/Thoughts📝 “Quotes”🗣 “Yes, but you are recording?…Otherwise we repeat ourselves and it grows unnatural. We will sound like bad actors. Even the transcript will show…
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Review: The Safekeep
Book Specs 📖 One Sentence Synopsis🔖 Hot, (hungry, horny) girl summer in a house with a stolen secret. Notes/Thoughts📝 “Quotes”🗣 “She had held a pear in her hand and she had eaten it skin and all. She had eaten the stem and she had eaten its seeds and she had eaten its core, and the…
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Review: The Passion According to G.H.
Book Specs 📖 One Sentence Synopsis🔖 Rich lady finds a cockroach in the maid’s room and then spirals for the rest of the book about nothingness. Notes/Thoughts📝 “Quotes”🗣 “How could I explain that my greatest fear is precisely of: being? and yet there is no other way. How can I explain that my greatest fear…
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