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Graywacke
Lost on Me | Veronica Raimo
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Mehso-so

My experience was on audio, in translation. It‘s autofiction about growing up in Rome with some issues. Fictional Veronica speaks with a false confidence, her anxieties sort of exposed in how she lies constantly, often for no apparent reason. It seems lying and imagined alternative lives are an escape. She tells her unreliable story with a self-deprecating humor. I liked it enough, but in hindsight I‘m glad to be past it. #Booker2024

sarahbarnes I will probably skip this one. 3w
Graywacke @sarahbarnes it‘s maybe one to skip. Of course you might feel differently from me. 3w
55 likes2 comments
review
Graywacke
Undiscovered: A Novel | Gabriela Wiener
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Pickpick

I just finished Undiscovered and feel rewarded. This is a work of personal reflection, of family and cultural and historical reflection, historical uncertainties and miscellany and crimes, the colonization of Peru, racism, and variations of unfaithfulness, with some lines perhaps designed to shock. This is on the International #Booker2024 longlist, a Peruvian author based in Spain.

dabbe 🖤🐾🖤 4w
55 likes1 stack add1 comment
blurb
Graywacke
Lost on Me | Veronica Raimo
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My current audiobook, care of my library. Another from the International #Booker2024 longlist. The cringing face on the cover makes me cringe.

38 likes1 stack add
review
Graywacke
Crooked Plow: A Novel | Itamar Vieira Junior
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Pickpick

My 5th on the International #Booker2024. Quilombos history - communities of free black escapes slaves in Brazil - is central to contemporary Brazilian politics. Here we get a story of black tenants farmers living in mud huts and their history with their landlords. What makes this book special to me was the look into the mythologies - African-originated encantados mixed into Catholic mythology and martyrs. This is worth a read.

batsy I want to read this! 1mo
Graywacke @batsy i‘m not as enthusiastic as many readers, but i enjoyed this a lot. Hope you can find a copy. 1mo
batsy The nice thing about Verso is that their books are easily available as epubs and kindles :) 1mo
Graywacke @batsy 👍 that works! 1mo
45 likes2 stack adds4 comments
review
Graywacke
Kairos: Roman | Jenny Erpenbeck
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Pickpick

My 3rd from the International #Booker2024 longlist, now on the shortlist. 1980‘s East Berlin. A young woman, 19, falls for a married man, age 53. It starts out somehow romantic before getting darker. What‘s interesting, and what i thought about while listening, was how this relationship reflects the state of the dying GDR. It‘s, if you like, a romantic look at a lost, stifled but stable East Berlin. It makes for interesting read.

Hooked_on_books I wasn‘t a fan of this one because the central “romance” gave me the icks immediately. And then of course it just got worse. What I did like was a look at East Germany from a non-western lens. I found it fascinating. 1mo
Graywacke @Hooked_on_books yeah, it‘s way icky. I had to adjust my perspective. 1mo
BarbaraBB Interesting is the right word. I liked it but not as much as her earlier works. 1mo
Graywacke @BarbaraBB I haven‘t read anything else by her to compare. I do have this sense that it‘s missing something that could make it really special, beyond just “interesting”, although I couldn‘t put my finger on what that might be. Still, I think it‘s a really nice thing, as is. 1mo
BarbaraBB Yes I felt similar. It is missing something. 1mo
48 likes1 stack add5 comments
blurb
Graywacke
The Silver Bone: A Novel | Andrey Kurkov
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A little tough to photograph the super-reflective public library cover. But my model did good. I peaked into this yesterday and seems I‘m reading it. Easy reading. (Reminds me of Gogol‘s The Nose in tone) #booker2024

Suet624 Your dog 💕💕💕 2mo
dabbe 🖤🐾🖤 2mo
BookmarkTavern So cozy! 💖 2mo
54 likes3 comments
review
Graywacke
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Pickpick

Offbeat 1990‘s Stockholm. This reads a lot like Rachel Cusk, but it‘s a study of relationships, lovers, friendships and mom. It has a lovely tolerance of personal oddities and failures, and a warmth in appreciating the whole person. I enjoyed it. (And it‘s short. Took this slow reader 3.5 hours to read these 137 pages) #Booker2024

BarbaraBB Glad you liked it so much. I did not get that much out of it. 2mo
Graywacke @BarbaraBB i saw your review. I admit it has grown on me. I like her relationships. I‘m charmed by Niki‘s contradictions. Just curious, any chance you made it to Stockholm in the 1990‘s? Or any other time? I spent a day there in 1997 (far from home). It was gorgeous and super unfriendly. 🙂 2mo
BarbaraBB I was there in 2007 and I liked it a lot too. Real Scandinavian: clean and easy-going. I loved the references to the city but didn‘t recognize them 2mo
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BarbaraBB Wait! Yo say UNfriendly! Really? That wasn‘t my experience but people do keep to themselves I think, especially compared to the US. Or were you treated badly? 2mo
Graywacke @BarbaraBB yes, UNfriendly. 🙂 I was mostly ignored as i was with a girlfriend and some other people. So no one was rude, it was just the feeling we all got. 2mo
BarbaraBB That is strange. I wouldn‘t know if it‘s typical for Sweden, I just was there that once and it was for work so I met some people who had to behave correctly 😀. Some years later I was in a Swedish village in winter and there everyone was really nice but I thinks that incomparable to Stockholm. 2mo
Graywacke @BarbaraBB i was in Sweden a week, all vacation but unstructured. I stayed in Gothenburg. Stockholm was distinct. Every where else was, to me, normal. 2mo
44 likes1 stack add7 comments
review
Graywacke
A Dictator Calls | Ismail Kadare
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Pickpick

I really like Kadare. He‘s playful and serious and very critical of the Albanian Stalinist state he lived most of his life in. Here he looks at one phone call, when Stalin called Boris Pasternak without warning and asked him about the recent arrest of fellow Jewish poet Osip Mandelstam, Pasternak basically failing this impossible call. Around this is Kadare‘s experience under the rule of this kind of tyrant. It‘s an odd, curious, readable book.

44 likes1 comment
blurb
Graywacke
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Started this, a library loan. Getting Rachel Cusk vibes. #booker2024

blurb
Graywacke
A Dictator Calls | Ismail Kadare
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I seem to be reading this. Library loan that is taking this slow reader about a minute a page. #Booker2024