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Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller

Instead of doomscrolling lately I have been reading my PDFs and it turns out if you do this you learn a whole bunch of stuff. I’m afraid I must recommend it

2manypdfs

opening paragraphs of all time

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

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Image one, the opening paragraph of The Haunting of Hill House:

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

Image two, the opening paragraph of We Have Always Lived in the Castle:

My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the deathcup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.