We read The Round House for our work Book Club. There were some pretty intense topics and topics from a 13-year-old boy’s mind I could have gone without knowing. I somehow managed to read it really fast, which means it was a gripping page turner.
I’m pretty sure I have the most worthless thoughts/mini-reviews on books. This is probably why I don’t review things. I tend to like everything! But whatever because I like Kindle highlights.
The Round House by Louise Erdrich
You have 39 highlighted passages
You have 2 notes
Last annotated on October 23, 2014
- There was amusement, adoration, amazement in his voice when he said those words. Oh, Geraldine! – Location 101
- I already knew, in a rudimentary way, that these questions would swirl around the facts. I already knew, too, that these questions would not change the facts. But they would inevitably change the way we sought justice. – Location 209
- I thought it was funny that his domed, balding, shiny head was eggish, like his name. – Location 217
- When she was better, she would make us a cake, she said, and sloppy joes. She had always liked to feed us. – Location 277
- Our big joke around pretty girls was Hey, show some restraint – Location 312
- The reason I go into this is that because of this show we set ourselves apart. We made drawings, cartoons, and even tried to write an episode. We pretended we had special knowledge. We were starting to get our growth and were anxious how we’d turn out. In TNG we weren’t skinny, picked on, poor, motherless, or scared. We were cool because no one else knew what we were talking about. – Location 321 [NOTE: Nerd culture and community at it’s finest!!!]
- I liked her the way a boy likes his aunt, but I felt differently about her breasts—on them I had a hopeless crush. – Location 384
- Very little is needed to make a happy life, – Location 561
- My father cast his eyes down, put out his hands, the picture of a man who had tried his best. – Location 572
- And the meat, roadkill? Oh god, no. It died in the backyard. – Location 580
- Sometimes we’d secretly roast a hot dog or marshmallow on a stick even though the fire was sacred and one time Randall had caught us. He’d claimed we’d taken the sacredness out of the fire with our hot dogs. – Location 589
- How sacred can your fire be if we sucked out its holiness with just our puny wieners? – Location 591
- While their moral standards for the rest of the world were rigid, they were always able to find excuses for their own shortcomings. It is these people really, said my father, small-time hypocrites, who may in special cases be capable of monstrous acts if given the chance. – Location 783
- I stood there in the shadowed doorway thinking with my tears. Yes, tears can be thoughts, why not? – Location 920
- A rough cloud had boiled over me—I wanted all of a sudden nothing else but to escape from my father, and my mother too, rip away their web of guilt and protection and nameless sickening emotions. – Location 1446
- he fell into the instant sleep of the ancient and the very young. – Location 2073
- Sonja said she’d painted it that blue because of the name of the color: Lost in Space. – Location 2130
- Pine-Sol and lemon polish, – Location 2131 [NOTE: These exact things remind me of my old house]
- Sonja wouldn’t let me drink a Coke but had some idea that orange soda was better for me. – Location 2163
- I’ve read that certain memories put down in agitation at a vulnerable age do not extinguish with time, but engrave ever deeper as they return and return. – Location 2218
- some nights that he lay awake wondering just how many unknown and similarly inconsequential accidents and bits of happenstance were at this moment occurring or failing to occur in order to ensure he took his next breath, and the next. – Location 2367
- One could argue that this was a much worse sin against art than drowning, say, a painter, a sculptor, a poet, certainly a novelist. Each left behind their works even in the most ancient of days. But a musician of those times took his art to the grave. – Location 2420
- Only those who learned from him in some way replicate his music, but it has become their own, too, which is the only way for music to remain alive. – Location 2427
- Pray for a hard-on! That’s a good one. Maybe I should pray to Saint Joseph. He was a carpenter and worked with wood. – Location 3167
- I didn’t think I was worth marrying, that’s why. Not worth marrying. – Location 3476
- Lots of men cry after they do something nasty to a woman. – Location 3487
- All of these thoughts were reasons I did not want to go home, or to be alone. They came up over me, shrouding my mind, covering my heart. – Location 3536
- Marshall vested absolute title to the land in the government and gave Indians nothing more than the right of occupancy, a right that could be taken away at any time. Even to this day, his words are used to continue the dispossession of our lands. But what particularly galls the intelligent person now is that the language he used survives in the law, that we were savages living off the forest, and to leave our land to us was to leave it useless wilderness, that our character and religion is of so inferior a stamp that the superior genius of Europe must certainly claim ascendancy and on and on. – Location 3587
- We try to press against the boundaries of what we are allowed, walk a step past the edge. – Location 3603
- He had his hand across the seat, resting on her leg above the knee. Occasionally she took one hand off the wheel, reached down, and rested her hand on top of his. – Location 3902
- The only thing that God can do, and does all of the time, is to draw good from any evil situation. – Location 3985
- We are never so poor that we cannot bless another human, are we? So it is that every evil, whether moral or material, results in good. You’ll see. – Location 3992
- I was building lie upon lie and it all came naturally to me as honesty once had. – Location 4091
- I realized that my deceits were of no consequence as I was dedicated to a purpose which I’d named in my mind not vengeance but justice. – Location 4091
- Most grown-ups think everything a young person does should be common knowledge. They brag about the slightest gesture from a boy. – Location 4140
- Now that I knew fear, I also knew it was not permanent. As powerful as it was, its grip on me would loosen. It would pass. – Location 4168
- Just yesterday a white guy asked me if I was a real Indian. No, I said, Columbus goofed up. The real Indians are in India. I’m a genuine Chippewa. – Location 4316
- Then I went upstairs and fell asleep for an hour and woke into the same great wash of dread I began with every time I woke up. I’d have to do the same thing tomorrow morning. – Location 4445
- I was always there, said Cappy. Every morning. I always had your back. – Location 4574
