28/12/17
“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
― James Baldwin
I found that quote this year. I think it conveys, with the precision of a surgeon, how I feel about literature. Countless emotions inside an inconsequential atom. And then, that atom, amid the indifference of the universe once beautifully described by
Crane, founds a book. And then another book. Perhaps, another atom. And then it escapes after seeing the other atom with a copy of
The Alchemist. Fret not, there's another atom waiting somewhere, holding a book by
Pessoa.
So! Hello reality; let's talk about this year.
* Disclaimer: This looks kinda nice on
my screen, but it's still a work in progress.
** Photo credits: Fernando Pessoa, Marcel Proust, Yukio Mishima, Sylvia Plath, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Rodolfo Walsh, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, New Year cat / CC
Clarice Lispector / via ABC.es
*** 79/80: one book was read twice.