Chaos Reads

Sideblog for books I’ve read or am currently reading. Spoilers found in reviews only and will be tagged. SFW. Tagged for potentially triggering content, but I’m not a mind reader. This is primarily a way to track and share my own reading, so I will not be taking suggestions or submissions. Sorry!

[excavationdeux]

epigraph of Her Body And Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

[chaos-reads]

“The more he traveled, the more he heard and saw and bigger his world became, which was just as he had hoped.”

Reincarnation Blues, Michael Poore

[chaosandcertainty]

“Mastering a thing was not magic, but hard work.”

Reincarnation Blues, Michael Poore

[chaosandcertainty]

“The trouble with problem solving…is that too many people are making money off the problems.”

Reincarnation Blues, Michael Poore

[chaos-reads]

“Sometimes superheroes are regular people, and there are millions of them, typing away at their keyboards.”

Reincarnation Blues, Michael Poore

[chaos-reads]

Reincarnation Blues, by Michael Poore, was an incredibly pleasant surprise! At the beginning, it had the feel of a book that could either be really entertaining or a huge waste of time, but it came through in a big way.

For the record, NPR’s review describes it as “like Cloud Atlas written by Douglas Adams,” and if that isn’t the most accurate description I don’t know what is.

[chaos-reads]

“Don’t be brave. If you’re scared, be scared. All survivors are.”

Fredrik Backman, “The Deal of a Lifetime”

[chaos-reads]

“I won’t let your ignorance silence my pain.”

-Zélie Adebola

[chaos-reads]

“The only difference between [the guards] and criminals is the uniform they wear.”

[chaos-reads]

“Never trust people who don’t have something in their lives that they love beyond all reason.”

Fredrik Backman, Beartown

[chaos-reads]

Every one of my Backman books ends with countless bookmarks like this. He writes characters with more complexity and nuance than any other author I’ve encountered, full stop. It’s a rare author (frankly, a rare white male author) who can write everything from young girls to old men, addicts to politicians, and teenage girls to mothers and fathers with equal virtuosity.

[chaos-reads]

“The complicated thing about good and bad people alike is that most of us can be both at the same time.”

Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

[chaos-reads]

“Perhaps one day he’ll find words for that feeling of being different. How physical it is. Exclusion is a form of exhaustion that eats its way into your skeleton. People who are like everyone else, who belong to the norm, the majority, can’t possibly understand it. How can they?”

Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

[chaos-reads]

“It’s always the aggressors’ feelings we have to defend. As if they’re the ones who need our understanding.”

Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

[chaos-reads]

Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

[chaos-reads]

“Everyone is a hundred different things, but in other people’s eyes we usually only get the chance to be one of them.”

Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

[chaos-reads]

“Their real problem isn’t that [he] raped someone but that [she] got raped. If she hadn’t existed, it wouldn’t have happened. Women are always the problem in the men’s world.”

Fredrik Backman