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ppaula

perpetually looking for my next favorite sentence! physically unable to dnf something. love it when a book proves me wrong.

2335 points

0% overlap
British & Irish Classic Literature
Critically Acclaimed Memoirs
Classics Starter Pack Vol II
My Taste
Never Let Me Go
Dictee
Penguin's Poems For Love
The Idiot
Pride and Prejudice
Reading...
Three Women
20%
Anatomy Of Criticism: Four Essays
23%

ppaula made progress on...

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Three Women

Three Women

Lisa Taddeo

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  • Becoming
    Thoughts from 72%

    It’s become somewhat of a running joke in my reading updates that “damn we’re {some significant amount of time} into this thing and she’s still not at the White House wth”. But after arriving at the White House, and hearing Michelle talk about the campaign trail and how everything in her life revolves around Barack, how she’s not Michelle the accomplished lawyer with dreams and aspirations but simply Barack’s Harvard educated wife
 I totally get why she spent 70% of her own memoir telling us who she was before she became First Lady to the President. And I’m glad she did; I actually feel a little guilty now wishing she’d hurry up and spend more time talking about the presidency. She deserves to be known outside of her relation to her husband; she’s a full person with wisdom and stories in her own right.

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  • ppaula wrote a review...

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  • Becoming
    ppaula
    Jul 26, 2026
    Becoming
    5.0
    Enjoyment: 5.0Quality: 5.0Characters: Plot: Audiobook: 5.0

    I am very rarely so inspired, but the notes on optimism, resilience, and determination in this were amazing...

    “failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result.”

    “it’s remarkable how a stereotype functions as an actual trap.”

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  • ppaula completed their yearly reading goal of 40 books!

    1d

    ppaula's 2026 Reading Challenge

    40 of 40 read
    Becoming
    The House on Mango Street
    The Great Gatsby
    The Stranger
    Annihilation
    A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1)
    Martyr!
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    ppaula finished a book

    1d
    Becoming

    Becoming

    Michelle Obama

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    ppaula started reading...

    2d
    Three Women

    Three Women

    Lisa Taddeo

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    ppaula wrote a review...

    3d
  • The House on Mango Street
    ppaula
    Jul 24, 2026
    The House on Mango Street
    3.0
    Enjoyment: 2.0Quality: 4.0Characters: 4.5Plot: 2.0

    “When you leave you must remember to come back for the others. A circle, understand? You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can’t erase what you know. You can’t forget who you are.”

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  • ppaula made progress on...

    3d
    The House on Mango Street

    The House on Mango Street

    Sandra Cisneros

    100%
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    ppaula commented on a post

    5d
  • Lucy
    itsahhnuh
    Edited
    Thoughts from 100% (page 164)

    I thought this was an excellent interview with Jamaica Kincaid: Salon - Jamaica Kincaid: People say I’m angry because I’m black and I’m a woman

    I appreciated reading it after reading Lucy. In the article she address critics who say she includes too many autobiographical references in her fiction. Lucy is so clearly inspired by her own life, but at the same time so clearly a character that's been created.

    I think Lucy could also be read as an angry character by someone who is looking to detract from the merits of the novel. I instead see her as a passionate, self-assured character. If she's ever angry she has every right to be, and it's so reductionistic to write off the works of a Black woman simply as "angry," to not be able to go further in your understanding of the work and reduce its author to a stereotype.

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  • ppaula made progress on...

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    Becoming

    Becoming

    Michelle Obama

    50%
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    ppaula wrote a review...

    1w
  • The Great Gatsby
    ppaula
    Jul 19, 2026
    The Great Gatsby
    3.0
    Enjoyment: 3.0Quality: 4.0Characters: 2.5Plot: 2.5

    “Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”

    “For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.”

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