Other Works

READING LIST

Linked here are short stories, essays, articles, and other written works that I like and want to share, sorted by year.

Life in the Iron Mills (Rebecca Harding Davis, 1861) - "A dirty canary chirps desolately in a cage beside me. Its dream of green fields and sunshine is a very old dream, -- almost worn out, I think."
The Yellow Wallpaper (Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1892) - "I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin."
A Mess of Pork (Harriet Simpson Arnow, 1935) - "I never asked her what she was doing. I don’t know what I thought about while I stood there and watched her hide pieces of the bloody, stinking meat in the ragged overalls. I do not remember thinking that she was crazy. I know that I kept watching for the sunrise. I seemed to know that her work must be done before sunrise. I know that I forgot the cold."
The Chrysanthemums (John Steinbeck, 1937) - "Then she whispered, "That’s a bright direction. There’s a glowing there.""
The Zoo Story (Edward Albee, 1958) - "People can’t have everything they want. You should know that; it’s a rule; people can have some of the things they want, but they can’t have everything."
The Semplica-Girl Diaries (George Saunders, 2012) - "Do not really like rich people, as they make us poor people feel dopey and inadequate. Not that we are poor. I would say we are middle. We are very, very lucky. I know that. But still, it is not right that rich people make us middle people feel dopey and inadequate."

The Pilaster (Elizabeth Madox Roberts, 1921) - "And I am sitting very still / and I am waiting on and on / for something that is never there / for something that is gone."
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] (E. E. Cummings, 1952) - "i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)"
Perhaps the World Ends Here (Joy Harjo, 1994) - "The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live."
Things Shouldn't Be So Hard (Kay Ryan, 2005) - "And when life stops, a certain space— however small — should be left scarred by the grand and damaging parade."
Uptown, Minneapolis, Minnesota (Hieu Min Nguyen, 2018) - "Even now, there is someone, somehow, waiting for me."

The Portrait of a Lady (Henry James, 1880) - "You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part."
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1886) - "Think of me at this hour, in a strange place, labouring under a blackness of distress that no fancy can exaggerate, and yet well aware that, if you will but punctually serve me, my troubles will roll away like a story that is told."
The Invisible Man (H.G. Wells, 1897) - "The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand."
Carrie (Stephen King, 1974) - "Nobody was really surprised when it happened, not really, not at the subconscious level where savage things grow."
A Taste For Monsters (Matthew J. Kirby, 2016) - "It helped if I allowed the pain to become anger, to let it scorch the backs of my eyes for several moments, and then unleash it like the phosphor I once handled so carefully. To survive, I had to always be a savage fire-in-waiting."

- Realityland: True-Life Adventures at Walt Disney World (David Koenig, 2007) - "Over the years, Walt Disney had made hundreds of appearances exactly like this one --pitching potential corporate sponsors and government officials to gain funding or favors for his latest project. The only difference was this time he was dead."
- Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World (Steven Johnson, 2016) - "History is mostly told as a long fight for the necessities, not the luxuries: the fight for freedom, equality, self-governance. Yet the history of delight matters, too, because so many of these seemingly trivial discoveries ended up triggering changes in the realm of serious history."