You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people. An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else can tell, what it is like to be alive. James Baldwin
Memories of Reading
Here is where, at the end of each year, I write down what I can recall from each book I read, for my own memory and for others would might be interested.
I like to read. I long wished that I could be one of those people who take meticulous notes on every sentence they read as they are reading, but I cannot lie to myself. When I see a particularly captivating idea or a wonderful phrase, I take a picture and leave it in my phone album until now.
These bookmarks are sorted by year. They are not rated on a five-star scale. They include how I came across the book, the quotes I remember, the main ideas in it I found fascinating. The comments may be long and winded or extremely brief. They are not meant to summarize the text or provide an objective analysis of the book’s merit. They are my memory of what I have read, which is bound to be imperfect and subjective, because these are my memories.
I hope you enjoy and maybe pick up some of them.
