Wander 〰
-
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…
-
Review: On the Calculation of Volume I
Book Specs 📖 One Sentence Synopsis🔖 An antiquarian bookseller finds herself on November 18th, ad infinitum. Notes/Thoughts📝 “” It seems so odd to me now, how one can be so unsettled by the improbable. When we know that our entire existence is founded on freak occurrences and improbable coincidences.” We have grown accustomed to living…
-
Review: Hurricane Season
Book Specs 📖 One Sentence Synopsis🔖 The gruesome murder of the village “Witch” unveils the deep systemic violence of a community raised on fear, poverty, and corruption. Notes/Thoughts📝 Notes/Thoughts📝 “”🗣 The rain can’t hurt you now, and the darkness doesn’t last forever. See there? See that light shining in the distance? The little light that…
-
Review: Beware of Pity
Book Specs 📖 One Sentence Synopsis🔖 After the embarrassment of asking a paraplegic to dance, a young cavalry officer becomes a slave to his destructive sympathies. Notes/Thoughts📝 “Quotes”🗣 There are two kinds of pity. One, the weak and sentimental kind, which is really no more than the heart’s impatience to be rid as quickly as…
-
Review: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Book Specs 📖 One Sentence Synopsis🔖 Philosophical exploration of “lightness” and “weight” in romantic relationships between four interconnected main characters and a dog in late 1960 Soviet occupied Czechoslovakia. Notes/Thoughts📝 “Quotes”🗣 “We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it…
-
Review: The Night Watchman
Book Specs 📖 One Sentence Synopsis🔖 Based on Erdrich’s grandfather’s struggle against Indian Termination Policy, follow the parallel stories of two employees at a jewel-bearing plant: a Chippewa council member seeking justice against the Policy and a young woman on a mission to find her sister. Notes/Thoughts📝 “Quotes”🗣 “You can never get enough of the…
-
Review: Notes of a Crocodile
Book Specs 📖 One Sentence Synopsis🔖 Queer coming-of-age story in post-martial law Taiwan between a female university student’s obsession with an older woman. Notes/Thoughts📝 “Quotes”🗣 “I wish I could fall in love with a man, but there are too many beautiful women.” “Unhealthy love is two people stoking a shared fantasy of desperate beauty, weaponizing…
-
Review: The Door
Book Specs 📖 One Sentence Synopsis🔖 Sassy, independent housekeeper and female writer develop a subversive relationship which comes crashing down after a dirty little secret is pried wide open. Notes/Thoughts📝 “Quotes”🗣 “I know now, what I didn’t then, that affection can’t always be expressed in calm, orderly, articulate ways, and that one cannot prescribe the…
-
Review: Repetition
Book Specs 📖 One Sentence Synopsis🔖 An author attends a symphony in Oslo and an unexpected event causes her to relive the repressed traumas of her youth almost five decades earlier at age 16. Notes/Thoughts📝 “Quotes”🗣 “Anything you want to forget will come back to you, it will haunt you so vividly that if feels…
-
Review: Flesh
Book Specs 📖 One Sentence Synopsis🔖 Fifteen year old Istvan’s sexual affair with an older married woman is the beginning of his tumultuous life. Notes/Thoughts📝 “He has this feeling, with women, that it’s hard to have an experience that feels entirely new, that doesn’t feel like something that has already happened, and will probably happen…
-
Review: American Teenager
Book Specs 📖 One Sentence Synopsis🔖 Eight interviews with American teenagers about navigating life as non-binary/transgender. Notes/Thoughts📝 “Quotes”🗣 “When you listen to stories and hear them, it can move people to action…We know ourselves better than anyone else. We have stories that we want to tell. We should tell them.” “The beautiful thing about transgender…
Since you’re here,
you might as well…