I’ve stopped rating books with stars. Why? Books are too nuanced and there are so many options. Why would I want to yuck on someone’s yum?

The final book of the Fallen Gods trilogy by Hannah Kaner.

I lament my own immersion in an economy that grinds what is beautiful and unique into dollars, converts gifts to commodities in a currency that enables us to purchase things we don’t really need while destroying what we do.

Whatever he says, whatever he does, you need to remember that you are a brilliant, amazing person. You bend over backwards to please that man, and if he doesn't appreciate you, if he doesn't realize how special you are, then you just have to do whatever you need to do to protect your heart.

She came to us as any apocalypse does: slowly at first, and then all at once.

What if, instead of being diagnosed—being called mentally ill—what if I had been able to receive care for its own sake. To be in distress, to ask for care, to receive it. What if there were space in this world for care.

It occurred to him that a spell to make one’s enemies into idiots via the power of breasts might be immensely helpful. Then again, it might not be a spell. It might have only been the breasts.

The standard of care in orthodontics is thus to instruct the person to wear the retainer forever. This is in line with the general trend of modern medicine to focus on the maintenance of chronic diseases, rather than dealing with their causes.

“Pain isn’t a competition,” I assure him. “There’s always enough to go around.”

The Western funeral home loves the word “dignity.” The largest funeral corporation has even trademarked the word. What dignity translates to, more often than not, is silence, a forced poise, a rigid formality.

And what was a home but somewhere you wouldn’t have to feel quite so alone.

How to apologize for wanting some word, some story, some beautiful thing for my own?

There is one indisputable way to identify a cult, one characteristic they all share. It is the notion that anyone who does not agree with the group’s beliefs or choices, who expresses concerns, who simply dares to ask questions, is deemed “unsafe.”

ts voice was like the wind, but also like a thousand trees thinking the same thought.

A person could work and work and work, and still never “earn” their dues. Sometimes success meant determination… and sometimes, it was just luck.

Perhaps being too powerful, too unopposed, is a curse in and of itself, leading to boredom and dissipation, and the invention of imaginary enemies whose powers to torment were less limited than those of flesh and blood.

2024 was full of ups and downs, but still read 120 books. Check out all the stats from reading this year and see the best books I read in 2024.

The biggest hits—be they Coca-Cola or Doritos or Kraft’s Velveeta Cheesy Skillets dinner kits—owe their success to formulas that pique the taste buds enough to be alluring but don’t have a distinct overriding single flavor that says to the brain: Enough already!

Parentified children are often referred to as “old souls” —wise and calm beyond their years. But they can pay for their precocity by harboring a squishy center of insecurity and loneliness, a wound formed in their earliest unsupported years.