Scan barcode
booksandboardingpass's reviews
172 reviews
This Close to Okay by Leesa Cross-Smith
3.0
“I haven’t properly handled her death yet, really. I can’t. I try, I guess… but none of it makes sense. She was there and now she’s just gone? Everything gets too slippery. My brain can’t … hold it. It feels both final and eternal at the same time. I can’t process it so I just let it… sit there… dark.”
“I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the winter, either. No one does. None of us know what’s going to happen one day to the next in this life. We just… keep going.” she said, surprising herself by being so bare with him. She could’ve tried to pretend like the winter would be no problem for her, that she was translucently optimistic about her future. She’d gotten used to pretending with people who didn’t know her well - and her family, too, when she didn’t feel like discussing it. It was easier to act like she’d always be fine, but she knew better. Even people without a history of mental illness had to ho to great lengths to protect their mental health.”
“True forgiveness is severely underrated, for both the forgiven and the forgiven. I knew I had to find a way to forgive Joel so I could go on with my life.”
“In a little town like Bloom, being a quarter black meant being not-white meant being one hundred percent black meant being an other. A threat to white supremacy.”
“After love, forgiveness is the strongest glue holding every family together.”
“I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the winter, either. No one does. None of us know what’s going to happen one day to the next in this life. We just… keep going.” she said, surprising herself by being so bare with him. She could’ve tried to pretend like the winter would be no problem for her, that she was translucently optimistic about her future. She’d gotten used to pretending with people who didn’t know her well - and her family, too, when she didn’t feel like discussing it. It was easier to act like she’d always be fine, but she knew better. Even people without a history of mental illness had to ho to great lengths to protect their mental health.”
“True forgiveness is severely underrated, for both the forgiven and the forgiven. I knew I had to find a way to forgive Joel so I could go on with my life.”
“In a little town like Bloom, being a quarter black meant being not-white meant being one hundred percent black meant being an other. A threat to white supremacy.”
“After love, forgiveness is the strongest glue holding every family together.”
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
5.0
« Maybe Beulah was seeing something more clearly on the nights she had these dreams, a little black child fighting in her sleep against an opponent she couldn’t name come morning because in the light that opponent just looked like the world around her. Intangible evil. Unspeakable unfairness. »
« You have to understand, H. The day you called me that woman’s name, I thought, Ain’t I been through enough? Ain’t just about everything I ever had been taken away from me? My freedom. My family. My body. And now I can’t even own my name? Ain’t I deserve to be Ethe, to you at least, if nobody else? My mama gave me that name herself. I spent six good years with her before they sold me out to Louisiana to work them sugarcanes. All I had of her then was my name. That was all I had to myself too. And you wouldn’t even give me that. »
« This is the problem of history. We cannot know that which we were not there to see and hear and experience for ourselves. We must rely upon the words of others. »
« You have to understand, H. The day you called me that woman’s name, I thought, Ain’t I been through enough? Ain’t just about everything I ever had been taken away from me? My freedom. My family. My body. And now I can’t even own my name? Ain’t I deserve to be Ethe, to you at least, if nobody else? My mama gave me that name herself. I spent six good years with her before they sold me out to Louisiana to work them sugarcanes. All I had of her then was my name. That was all I had to myself too. And you wouldn’t even give me that. »
« This is the problem of history. We cannot know that which we were not there to see and hear and experience for ourselves. We must rely upon the words of others. »
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
5.0
« But shed been feeling lonely. And though she'd studied enough existential philosophy to believe loneliness was a fundamental part of being a human in an essentially meaningless universe, it was good to see him. »
« She wanted to have a purpose, something to give her a reason to exist. But she had nothing. »
« Between life and death there is a library," she said. 'And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be different if you had made other choices . .. Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?' »
« You have as many lives as you have possibilities. There are lives where you make different choices. And those choices lead to different outcomes. If you had done just one thing differently, you would have a different life story. And they all exist in the Midnight Library. They are all as real as this life' »
« Bertrand Russell wrote that To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three-parts dead. Maybe that was her problem. Maybe she was just scared of living. »
« A person was like a city. You couldnt let a few less desirable parts put you off the whole. There may be bits you don't like, a few dodgy side streets and suburbs, but the good stuff makes it worthwhile. »
« Do you ever think 'how did I end up here? Like you are in a maze and totally lost and it's all your fault because you were the one who made every turn? And you know that there are many routes that could have helped you out, because you hear all the people on the outside of the maze who made it through »
« So, you see? Sometimes regrets aren't based on fact at all.Sometimes regrets are just...’ She searched for the appropriate term and found it. 'A load of bullshit? »
« what we consider to be the most successful route for us to take, actually isn't. Because too often our view of success is about some external bullshit idea of achievement - an Olympic medal, the ideal husband, a good salary. And we have all these metrics that we try and reach. When really success isn't something you measure, and life isn't a race you can win. It's all ... bollocks, actually… »
« The quiet made her realise how much noise there was elsewhere in the world. Here, noise had meaning. You heard something and you had to pay attention. »
« When you stay too long in a place, you forget just how big an expanse the world is. You get no sense of the length of those longitudes and latitudes. Just as, she supposed, it is hard to have a sense of the vastness inside any one person.
But once you sense that vastness, once something reveals it, hope emerges, whether you want it to or not, and it clings to you as stubbornly as lichen clings to rock. »
« It was as though she had reached some state of acceptance about life - that if there was a bad experience, there wouldn't only be bad experiences. She realised that she hadn't tried to end her life because she was miserable, but
because she had managed to convince herself that there was no way out of her misery.
That, she supposed, was the basis of depression as well as the difference between fear and despair. Fear was when you wandered into a cellar and worried that the door would close shut. Despair was when the door closed and locked behind you. »
« We only know what we perceive. Everything we experience is ultimately just our perception of it. “It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see?" »
« Never underestimate the big importance of small things, Mrs Elm had said. You must always remember that. »
« The paradox of volcanoes was that they were symbols of destruction but also life. Once the lava slows and cools, it solidifies and then breaks down over time to become soil - rich, fertile soil.
She wasn't a black hole, she decided. She was a volcano. And like a volcano she couldn't run away from herself. Shed have to stay there and tend to that wasteland.
She could plant a forest inside herself. »
« She wanted to have a purpose, something to give her a reason to exist. But she had nothing. »
« Between life and death there is a library," she said. 'And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be different if you had made other choices . .. Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?' »
« You have as many lives as you have possibilities. There are lives where you make different choices. And those choices lead to different outcomes. If you had done just one thing differently, you would have a different life story. And they all exist in the Midnight Library. They are all as real as this life' »
« Bertrand Russell wrote that To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three-parts dead. Maybe that was her problem. Maybe she was just scared of living. »
« A person was like a city. You couldnt let a few less desirable parts put you off the whole. There may be bits you don't like, a few dodgy side streets and suburbs, but the good stuff makes it worthwhile. »
« Do you ever think 'how did I end up here? Like you are in a maze and totally lost and it's all your fault because you were the one who made every turn? And you know that there are many routes that could have helped you out, because you hear all the people on the outside of the maze who made it through »
« So, you see? Sometimes regrets aren't based on fact at all.Sometimes regrets are just...’ She searched for the appropriate term and found it. 'A load of bullshit? »
« what we consider to be the most successful route for us to take, actually isn't. Because too often our view of success is about some external bullshit idea of achievement - an Olympic medal, the ideal husband, a good salary. And we have all these metrics that we try and reach. When really success isn't something you measure, and life isn't a race you can win. It's all ... bollocks, actually… »
« The quiet made her realise how much noise there was elsewhere in the world. Here, noise had meaning. You heard something and you had to pay attention. »
« When you stay too long in a place, you forget just how big an expanse the world is. You get no sense of the length of those longitudes and latitudes. Just as, she supposed, it is hard to have a sense of the vastness inside any one person.
But once you sense that vastness, once something reveals it, hope emerges, whether you want it to or not, and it clings to you as stubbornly as lichen clings to rock. »
« It was as though she had reached some state of acceptance about life - that if there was a bad experience, there wouldn't only be bad experiences. She realised that she hadn't tried to end her life because she was miserable, but
because she had managed to convince herself that there was no way out of her misery.
That, she supposed, was the basis of depression as well as the difference between fear and despair. Fear was when you wandered into a cellar and worried that the door would close shut. Despair was when the door closed and locked behind you. »
« We only know what we perceive. Everything we experience is ultimately just our perception of it. “It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see?" »
« Never underestimate the big importance of small things, Mrs Elm had said. You must always remember that. »
« The paradox of volcanoes was that they were symbols of destruction but also life. Once the lava slows and cools, it solidifies and then breaks down over time to become soil - rich, fertile soil.
She wasn't a black hole, she decided. She was a volcano. And like a volcano she couldn't run away from herself. Shed have to stay there and tend to that wasteland.
She could plant a forest inside herself. »
One Day in December by Josie Silver
3.0
“I’m not a bitch though; or maybe I’m just a quiet one inside my own head. Isn’t everyone?”
“Thanks for nothing, Universe. You suck big donkey balls.”
“I’ll have to take a rain check. I’ve got a double date tonight with Ben and Jerry. They’re sweet. […] We’re going to work our way through the Karamel Sutra. It’s going to be a thrill a minute.”
“Thanks for nothing, Universe. You suck big donkey balls.”
“I’ll have to take a rain check. I’ve got a double date tonight with Ben and Jerry. They’re sweet. […] We’re going to work our way through the Karamel Sutra. It’s going to be a thrill a minute.”
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
4.0
“But even here, where nobody married dark, you were still colored and that meant that white men could kill you for refusing to die.”
“There was nothing to being white except boldness. You could convince anyone you belonged somewhere if you acted like you did.”
“Because she knew, if it came down to her word versus Loretta’s, she would always be believed. And knowing this she felt, for the first time, truly white.”
“The white shotgun house appeared, looking the same as she’d remembered, which seemed wrong since her grandmother would not be sitting on the porch to greet them. Her death hit in waves. Not a flood, but water lapping steadily at her ankles.
You could drown in two inches of water. Maybe grief was the same.”
“There was nothing to being white except boldness. You could convince anyone you belonged somewhere if you acted like you did.”
“Because she knew, if it came down to her word versus Loretta’s, she would always be believed. And knowing this she felt, for the first time, truly white.”
“The white shotgun house appeared, looking the same as she’d remembered, which seemed wrong since her grandmother would not be sitting on the porch to greet them. Her death hit in waves. Not a flood, but water lapping steadily at her ankles.
You could drown in two inches of water. Maybe grief was the same.”