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currently-reading (1)
to-read (594)
avengers (542)
graphic-novels (318)
gone-but-will-return (240)
fantasy-and-science-fiction (234)
doctor-who-tv-novels (190)
fiction (175)
the-avengers (162)
film-and-television (153)
art (142)
doctor-who-fiction
(130)
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reference (58)
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little-black-classics (125)
history (108)
terry-pratchett (108)
horror (92)
michael-moorcock (89)
doctor-who-fact (82)
annuals (81)
countryside-and-gardening (81)
daughters-bedtime-stories (59)
reference (58)
h-p-lovecraft (55)


“History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells, 'Can't you remember anything I told you?' and lets fly with a club.”
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“Travel and tell no one, live a true love story and tell no one, live happily and tell no one, people ruin beautiful things.”
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“The internet gave us all the power of speech, and what did we discover? That victory goes to he who shouts the loudest, and that reason does not sell.”
― The Sudden Appearance of Hope
― The Sudden Appearance of Hope

“The novel’s not dead, it’s not even seriously injured, but I do think we’re working in the margins, working in the shadows of the novel’s greatness and influence. There’s plenty of impressive talent around, and there’s strong evidence that younger writers are moving into history, finding broader themes. But when we talk about the novel we have to consider the culture in which it operates. Everything in the culture argues against the novel, particularly the novel that tries to be equal to the complexities and excesses of the culture. This is why books such as JR and Harlot’s Ghost and Gravity’s Rainbow and The Public Burning are important—to name just four. They offer many pleasures without making concessions to the middle-range reader, and they absorb and incorporate the culture instead of catering to it. And there’s the work of Robert Stone and Joan Didion, who are both writers of conscience and painstaking workers of the sentence and paragraph. I don’t want to list names because lists are a form of cultural hysteria, but I have to mention Blood Meridian for its beauty and its honor. These books and writers show us that the novel is still spacious enough and brave enough to encompass enormous areas of experience. We have a rich literature. But sometimes it’s a literature too ready to be neutralized, to be incorporated into the ambient noise. This is why we need the writer in opposition, the novelist who writes against power, who writes against the corporation or the state or the whole apparatus of assimilation. We’re all one beat away from becoming elevator music.”
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“In the meantime, the works of Gordon, Lupyan, and others suggests that words are not just convenient labels for things; rather, they are extremely powerful mental devices.”
― The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language
― The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language

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Peter’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Peter’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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