November Reads!

Hello Internet!

This school year has been unequivocally difficult, I have been swamped with work and responsibility however I did get a few good books in so here they are.

A Hologram For The King by Dave Eggers

“The key thing is managed awareness of your role in the world and history. Think too much and you know you are nothing. Think just enough and you know you are small, but important to some. That's the best you can do.” 
― Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King

“It all meant something. Until it didn't.” 
― Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King

“Live long enough and you'll disappoint everyone. People think you're able to help them and usually you can't. And so it becomes a process of choosing the one or two people you try hardest not to disappoint. The person in my life I am determined not to disappoint is you.” 
― Dave Eggers, A Hologram for the King

The Hand Maid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

“But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.” 
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

“Falling in love, we said; I fell for him. We were falling women. We believed in it, this downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely. God is love, they once said, but we reversed that, and love, like heaven, was always just around the corner. The more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total. We were waiting, always, for the incarnation. That word, made flesh.

And sometimes it happened, for a time. That kind of love comes and goes and is hard to remember afterwards, like pain. You would look at the man one day and you would think, I loved you, and the tense would be past, and you would be filled with a sense of wonder, because it was such an amazing and precarious and dumb thing to have done; and you would know too why your friends had been evasive about it, at the time.

There is a good deal of comfort, now, in remembering this.” 
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

The Art of Racing In The Rain by Garth Stein

“There is no dishonor in losing the race. There is only dishonor in not racing because you are afraid to lose.” 
― Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain

“That which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves.” 
― Garth Stein

“To live every day as if it had been stolen from death, that is how I would like to live. To feel the joy of life, as Eve felt the joy of life. To separate oneself from the burden, the angst, the anguish that we all encounter every day. To say I am alive, I am wonderful, I am. I am. That is something to aspire to.” 
― Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain

So though I haven't read much these books were absolutely amazing!

A Hologram for The King was simply a tale of inherent sadness that was displayed throughout the novel, this book was mysterious and surprisingly gripping... read synopsis here

 A Handmaid's Tale was a disturbing and engrossing distopian novel, exploring sexuality and society in a way in which I have never read before... read the synopsis here.

 The Art of Racing in The Rain made me cry uncontrollably, it is told from the prospective of a dog on his last day of life. Find the synopsis to this story here