From page 219 of The Cabin at the End of the World (Paul Tremblay; 2018):

Andrew has taught literature for years, calling his course How the World Ends. The course has occasionally included a literary analysis of the Bible’s Book of Revelation and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding their red, black, white, and pale horses. Over the years the course syllabus has evolved, but one of the main arguments / discussions he has with his students remains a constant. No matter how bleak or dire, end-of-the-world scenarios appeal to us because we take meaning from the end. Aside from the obvious and well-discussed idea that our narcissism is served when imagining we, out of all the billions who will perish, might survive, Andrew has argued there’s also undeniable allure to witnessing the beginning of the end and perishing along with everyone and everything else. He has impishly said to a classroom, to the scowl of more than a few students, “ Within the kernel of end-times awe and ecstasy is the seed of all organized religions.”

From page 69 of The Hole (Hye-Young Pyun; 2017):

It was impossible to capture the trajectory of life in a map. Without one, there was no way of wrapping your brain around it all, and yet he was skeptical as to whether you could ever represent the world through maps alone.

But it was meaningful. Someone had taken these invisible trajectories that could not be studied with any sort of accuracy and had tried anyway to turn them into a tangible space. He found it boring sometimes for the same reason. A world that could not be understood perfectly, could not be explained unambiguously, and was interpreted differently based on political purposes and conveniences was no different from the world he was already living in. And yet, the one way in which maps were clearly better than life was that they improved with failure. Life itself was merely an accumulation of failures, and those failures never made life better.

The jacket copy suggests that The Hole evokes the work of Shirley Jackson and Stephen King. While I appreciate the assertion, I thought this meditation on the horror of finding blank emptiness at the center of a career, a marriage, a life was more philosophical than the comparisons to psychological thrillers suggests.

This was the book I completed before heading to bed last night, so I have completed sixty-eight books so far this year:

27 novels
10 plays
18 non-fiction titles
13 graphic fiction works
18 works published this year

My complete list can be found here.

Even better on rereading:
■ Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro; 2005. Fiction.)
■ Childhood’s End (Arthur C. Clarke; 1953. Fiction.)
■ Daytripper (Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá; 2011. Graphic fiction.)
■ Mrs. Caliban (Rachel Ingalls; 1983. Fiction.)

Forgot how wonderful this writer is:
■ Memento Mori (Muriel Spark; 1959. Fiction.)

For those who loved The Elementals (Michael McDowell; 1981):
■ The Reapers Are the Angels (Alden Bell; 2010. Fiction.)

A new-ish author who deserves the hype:
■ Little Fires Everywhere (Celeste Ng; 2017. Fiction.)
■ Everything I Never Told You (Celeste Ng; 2014. Fiction.)

Fabulous story for a long car trip:
■ American Kingpin (Nick Bilton; 2017. Non-fiction.)

Honorable mention:
■ The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet (Justin Peters; 2016. Non-fiction.)

The most engrossing book I’ve read so far this year (not including rereads):
■ Behold the Dreamers (Imbolo Mbue; 2016. Fiction.)

Honorable mention:
■ Killers of the Flower Moon (Dan Grann; 2017. Non-fiction.)
■ An Abbreviated Life (Ariel Leve; 2016. Non-fiction.)
■ After the Eclipse (Sarah Perry; 2017. Non-fiction.)
■ The Hole (Hye-young Pyun; 2017. Fiction.)

■ With or Without You (Domenica Ruta; 2013. Non-fiction.)
p. 23
Pride like this is both tyrannical and tragic, for the chief function of pride is to usher in the fall.

My parents had sufficient raw materials to achieve a level of fame in a small town, but not much more than that.

p. 119
It made sense to me. There are some things that we have to forget about in order to get through the day.

■ I’m Supposed to Protect You from All This (Nadja Spiegelman; 2016. Non-fiction.)
p. 87
According to neuroscientists, when we stir up a long-term memory, it floats in our consciousness, unstable, for a window of approximately three hours. During this time, the memory is malleable. The present infiltrates the past. We add details to fill in the gaps. Then the brain re-encodes the memory as if it were new, writing over the old one. As it sinks back down into the depths of our minds, we are not even aware of what we have gained or lost, or why.

p. 235
It had happened to me once, the unexpected resurgence of a difficult childhood memory. It had made me feel I was losing my hold on reality. It terrified me, already, that I was composed of a past that was so lonely, that was made up of memories and narratives no one else in my family could agree upon. It was too much that it might be unknowable to myself as well. I wondered often how many other memories lurked within me, dark and alien as cancers.

■ I’ll Be Gone in the Dark (Michelle McNamara; 2018. Non-fiction.)
p. 199
In their reserve and in virtually every other way, detectives differ from show-biz folks. Detectives listen. They’re getting a read. Entertainers get a read only to gauge their influence on a room. Detectives deal in concrete tasks. I once spent an hour listening to an actress analyze a three-line text that hurt her feelings. Eventually I’ll see the cracks in a detective’s veneer, but in the beginning their company is an unexpected relief, like fleeing a moodily lit cast party loud with competitive chatter and joining a meeting of determined Eagle Scouts awaiting their next challenge. I wasn’t a native in the land of the literal-minded, but I enjoyed my time there.

■ A Higher Loyalty (James Comey; 2018. Non-fiction.)
p. 118
I had never met President Obama before and was struck by two things: how much thinner he appeared in person and his ability to focus.

p. 121
On the way out the door, I told Kathy Ruemmler how surprised I was by the interesting discussion, telling her, “I can’t believe someone with such a supple mind actually got elected president.”

p. 123
Though it was a small moment, what struck me about President Obama’s remark is that it displayed a sense of humor, insight, and an ability to connect with an audience, which I would later come to appreciate in a president even more. These are all qualities that are indispensable in good leaders. A sense of humor in particular strikes me as an important indicator – or “tell” – about someone’s ego. Having a balance of confidence and humility is essential to effective leadership. Laughing in a genuine way requires a certain level of confidence, because we all look a little silly laughing: that makes us vulnerable, a state insecure people fear. And laughing is also frequently an appreciation of others, who have said something that is funny. That is, you didn’t say it, and by laughing you acknowledge the other, something else insecure people can’t do.

■ The Rules Do Not Apply (Ariel Levy; 2017. Non-fiction.)
p. 4
My lined notebooks were the only place I could say as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted. To this day I feel comforted and relieved of loneliness, no matter how foreign my surroundings, if I have a pad and a pen.

p. 5
(When we expressed subdued versions of our outrage to our elders, their responses invariably included the phrase “paying your dues.” It was not a phrase we cared for.)

p. 154
How did people do this? People who’d lost children who had existed – not for minutes but days, decades? Children who had voices, who had opened their eyes. Children with names. Did these people wake up every morning until the day they died and beg Mother Nature to return what she had given and then taken away?