Welcome to Litsy!

Can't believe I forgot to review this! I mean I love poetic prose so this was always going to be one for me, the blend of the autobiographical stories and bittersweet ideals works perfectly and I thoroughly enjoyed it

"Did you know people get rich off of sadness? I want to meet the millionaire of American sadness. I want to look him in the eye, shake his hand, and say, 'it's been an honor to serve my country."

The title of this book made me want to read it more than anything. It's such beautiful writing, containing more meaning in some sentences than most books have in their entirety.
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Book 207

What a beautiful, complicated, hard book. This autobiographical novel is a letter to the author‘s mother. It covers topics like racism, immigration, war, imperialism, inter generational trauma, opioids and youth overdoses, sexuality, the intersection of race and sexuality, poverty, addiction, mental illness, abuse, and the way decades of manual labor break down a person‘s body. I highly recommend reading it.

Book 14 of 2021 - can see why this has been so highly praised. Quite poetic at times, which I sometimes struggle to engage with, but definitely worth a read. Raw, honest and beautiful. 4 ⭐️s

“Sometimes, when I‘m careless, I think survival is easy: you just keep moving forward with what you have, or what‘s left of what you were given, until something changes—or you realize, at last, that you can change without disappearing, that all you had to do was wait until the storm passes you over and you find that—yes—your name is still attached to a living thing.”

—Ocean Vuong

“We try to preserve life -- even when we know it has no chance of enduring its body. We feed it, keep it comfortable, bathe it, medicate it, caress it, even sing to it. We tend to these basic functions not because we are brave or selfless but because, like breath, it is the most fundamental act of our species: to sustain the body until time leaves it behind“ (198).

A young man of Vietnamese origine writes a letter to his illiterate mother. Amazing novel! Excellent story and style. Ocean Vuong is a promising young writer

"But why can't the language for creativity be the language of regeneration?"

"The girl, her ear pressed to the woman's chest, listens as if eavesdropping behind a door."

#QuotsyAug21 Day 20: #Manicure

Beautifully written book.

Words like these make me wonder, how is such depth of thought or feelings even possible? This is so beautiful!

"Too much joy, I swear, is lost on our
desperation to keep it."

-- 5⭐️

#oceanvuong #bookstagram #bookstoread

Beautiful writing. Powerful story.

“Who will be lost in the story we tell ourselves? Who will be lost in ourselves? A story, after all, is a kind of swallowing. To open a mouth, in speech, is to leave only the bones, which remain untold.”

To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once.

This book! Such beauty! Books like these make me feel like a book snob. My book club read and discussed for this book and I loved sharing it with my friends 💕

This book is a mixture of everything happy, sad, first times, heartbreak, loss, misunderstanding in mental health, read by Ocean himself with his emotional warmth and bluntness.

#currentlyreading #audiobook #autobiography #librarybook #readingthelibrary #readyforthefuture #readathon #reading #readingmyownbooks #loveislove #lgbtq #queerbooks #love

#CuriousCovers Day 7 #Gray

I started this one a while ago but it wasn‘t the right time. It‘s back on the shelf for now as I want to try again instead of making it a DNF.

My May 2021 reads. It‘s Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage month and I wanted to honor that by reading #AAPI authors this month. There were some excellent reads this month!
#Bookworm #May2021Reads #AAPIauthors 📚🐛❤️

How can this beautiful book be anything other than 5 ⭐ Such a powerful story told by a young writer with powerful skills. The language alone is worth reading this book. I read the book and tonight attended a live book event with Ocean Vuong. Such an amazing human being. These are the kinds of people I am just in awe of. So much generosity, so much love, so much empathy, so much knowledge!
❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤

Starting a new book late on a Saturday night. Not getting much done tonight besides reading! 📖🤓

Hard.
Tough.
Didn't appeal...
The actual prose is sublime, so full and rich even when it's describing harrowing and harsh experience or landscape. But the story, the content, I struggled and would have given up except for it being a book club.

So, book club pick... really like the blurb on the back but finding it a tough read...😏😏

Four stars because there‘s no denying it‘s beautifully written. For a novel that deals with tough issues like mental illness, addiction and feeling displaced I didn‘t want to stop reading it, and read parts over again. It‘s not without its faults though - I didn‘t connect to the characters much and as beautiful as the writing is there were times it had a feeling of try hard about it. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Brought to the US as a toddler by an abusive, loving mother and sharing a home with a schizophrenic, wise grandmother, the narrator lives in an unsteady, harsh world that can only be stabilized by translation. As a letter to his illiterate mother, he writes himself into existence. Perhaps a too-much anticipated read. I‘ve loved other novels written by poets, with similar stories, but this was a little too ephemeral, too flitting, too inscrutable.

I'm posting one book per day from the ever growing unread stacks in my personal library. No description or explanation, just books I own and plan to read. #tbr

Day 8

This has a very melancholy and lyrical feel to it.

I've heard a lot about this book, but never really wanted to read it, until the #FoodandLit challenge came around 😅 And wow! - I'm stunned! Beautifully written, deep and filled with emotion, the book just sucked me in. This was so intense.

#Vietnam @Texreader @Butterfinger
#BookSpinBingo @TheAromaofBooks

‘By then, violence was already mundane to me, was what I knew, ultimately, of love.‘

Beautifully written, often evocative, frequently distressing, this is the story of Little Dog, his mother and grandmother, and his first love, Trevor. Vuong looks at what it means to be the child of a survivor of war, and to be a child immigrant, acting as interpreter for a mother who doesn‘t have the language.

It‘s a pick because I can‘t describe it as so-so.

Beautiful writing, layered and lyrical. Not so much a narrative of events but an exposition of their emotional consequences. The family traumas and life‘s heartaches bearing on Little Dog‘s soul are perfectly and thoughtfully captured. 9/10

“I always insist with a little mischievousness that I‘m writing something very normal, very common,” Vuong has said. “In fact, perhaps the middle class story is the exotic, is the rare, privileged gem that very few people get to experience.”

Quote from the New Yorker. The article/review itself gives an extensive summary of the entire plot of the book though - I know we‘re not in thriller territory, but I‘d really rather they didn‘t.

I‘m really conflicted on how to review this one. I thought the writing was beautiful but most of the subject matter was really upsetting, distasteful, violent, explicit.... I could go on.

I‘ll glad I read it but I‘m not sure I could recommend it... so i think it‘s going to have to be a so-so, purely for the content. The writing would be a pick.

What did you think Rachel? #buddyread

#readingasia2021 #vietnam

OK @squirrelbrain - I‘m going into our #buddyread. The cover is also gorgeous. I‘m kind of expecting heavy, though 😔

“To be gorgeous, you must first be seen..”

“I miss you more than I remember you”

#poetry our local tree poet 🌳

I finished reading this book for the first time a few weeks ago. I am reading it again. Slowly. Because that's what this book demands. It is a novel that exposes deep, personal, heart-wrenching truths. As any novel written by a poet must.

Evocative, creative and thought provoking this novel is very rich. I loved the metaphors. Possible spoiler here: the style of the novel moves to poetry halfway which left me a bit lost. However the author explains it by wanting to create a fracture in the narrative. It‘s enlightening reading what inspired Ocean Vuong writing : https://lithub.com/ocean-vuong-the-10-books-i-needed-to-write-my-novel/

“You think I‘m fucked up?”.... “I think you‘re just you”

#amber #poetrymatters @TheSpineView

This poem https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/57586/on-earth-were-briefl... was published 5 years before the (tagged) book of the same name.

#ukkindledeal

Beautiful, not boring.

#threewordreview

This one is a hard one for me to review. It‘s beautifully written and feels like poetry more than a narrative. The author reads the story and his voice and words were so beautiful that I zoned out a few times. It‘s also so utterly heartbreaking and sad that it was really hard to listen to sometimes. It‘s about love, loss, identity, race, sex, and so so much more! It thoroughly depressed me so I can‘t really say I enjoyed it. 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Good morning!!! New day, new book and new capuchino creamer!!!