134 books
—
5 voters
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(3133)
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fiction (175)
the-avengers (162)
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art (142)
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)


“Anyone who has a garden, park or orchard tree has an opportunity to ensure that it offers protection, brings beauty and bears fruit for future generations. In short, every one of us should aspire to be a forester.”
― The New Sylva: A Discourse of Forest and Orchard Trees for the Twenty-First Century
― The New Sylva: A Discourse of Forest and Orchard Trees for the Twenty-First Century

“A childhood without books â€� that would be no childhood. That would be like being shut out from the enchanted place where you can go and find the rarest kind of joy.”
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“You can hide memories, but you can't erase the history that produced them.”
― Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
― Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“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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The Drunken Druid Award is a prestigious literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length fictional novel. This peer-reviewed Book A ...more
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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