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ellenguyenphuonglinh's reviews
969 reviews
Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us by Rachel Aviv
Did not finish book.
Did not finish book.
Stranger, Baby by Emily Berry
3.0
It is perfectly true that she obsessed me,
in spite of the fact that she died when I was thirteen,
until I was forty-four. A mother's death lasts a lot of years
What shall we do?
in spite of the fact that she died when I was thirteen,
until I was forty-four. A mother's death lasts a lot of years
What shall we do?
White Spaces: Selected Poems and Early Prose by Paul Auster
4.0
It happens, and as it continues to happen, we forget where we were when we began. Later, when we have traveled from this moment as far as we have traveled from the beginning, we will forget where we are now. Eventually, we will all go home, and if there are those among us who do not have a home, it is certain, nevertheless, that they will leave this place to go wherever it is they must. If nothing else, life has taught us all this one thing: whoever is here now will not be here later.
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
3.0
'After all it is right,' said she, hearing the voices of children at play while she was dressing. 'If the world stood still, it would retrograde and become corrupt, if that is not Irish. Looking out of myself, and my own painful sense of change, the progress all around me is right and necessary. I must not think so much of how circumstances affect me myself, but how they affect others, if I wish to have a right judgment, or a hopeful trustful heart.' And with a smile ready in her eyes to quiver down to her lips, she went into the parlour and greeted Mr Bell.
Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estés
4.0
This is our meditation practice as women, calling back the dead and dismembered aspects of ourselves, calling back the dead and dismembered aspects of life itself. The one who re-creates from that which has died is always a double-sided archetype. The Creation Mother is always also the Death Mother and vice versa. Because of this dual nature, or double-tasking, the great work before us is to learn to understand what around and about us and what within us must live, and what must die. Our work is to apprehend the timing of both; to allow what must die to die, and what must live to live.
Mãn by Kim Thúy
3.0
According to legend, twin brothers were in love with the same girl. The first married her. The second, choked with sorrow, left the village so his brother wouldn't notice. The broken-hearted brother walked until he was exhausted, until he was transformed into limestone. The other twin took the same road in search of his brother. He dropped dead of fatigue next to the rock and metamorphosed into a betel palm. His wife followed his tracks and in the same place was turned into a climbing vine with heart-shaped leaves, wound around the trunk of the palm tree that shaded the rock. I have often wondered how that love triangle had been able to become the symbol of a happy marriage, because the end proved so sad. I think we misunderstood our ancestors. They placed the platter of betel at the head of the procession because they wanted to warn the newlyweds of the danger of impossible loves, not the opposite. Or did they want to warn us that love can kill?
Em by Kim Thúy
3.0
If I knew how to end a conversation, if I could distinguish true truths, personal truths from instinctive truths, I would have disentangled the threads for you before tying them up or arranging them so that the story of this book would be clear between us. But I have followed the advice of the painter Louis Boudreault, who advised me to play with the threads in the artwork he created for this book. Some threads stayed where they were despite the veering to the left and the ups and downs when the painting was moved from Monsieur Boudreault's studio to my home. Others imposed themselves by coming away from the canvas in the middle of the night, as I listened to the silences and testimonies of the soldiers, the combatants, and those who refused to fight; while I erased thousands of words in blocks, in paragraphs, in sentences, so as not to underscore some, to highlight others too boldly, and in the end to betray the delicate balance that maintains us in love. And in life.