Welcome to Litsy!

Brilliant & brutal. This one was difficult for me to listen to at times because of the visceral suffering of both people and animals in different forms. The words were lyrical but harsh. Narrated by the author, the #audiobook is most definitely the way to go. The boy, Little Dog, came of age in the same time I did and I felt deeply connected to the story because I could relate to the time, if not the experiences. Gorgeous, gorgeous. Recommended 🌟

Lovely and lyrical novel, from a young man to his illiterate mother, talking about his first love and addiction and the struggles of being a first generation American and mixed race. I inhaled in one sitting.

01. On Earth We‘re Briefly Gorgeous, 32 Yolks
02. The Water Dancer
03. Red at the Bone, by Jacqueline Woodson

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain

♥️

Narrated by the author, this #audiobook is amazing. I'm only an hour in but wow, it's so powerful. I've seen it on several of the #bestof2019 (so far) lists and I believe that's right where it belongs.

The writing is brilliant and lyrical. The story beautiful, brutal. And the unforgettable, recurring the images: fire, hummingbirds, monarchs, buffaloes, and my g-d, the monkeys.

I can‘t say it any better than Celeste Ng who tells us that the book is about: “whether putting words to one‘s experience can bridge wound that span generations, and whether it‘s ever possible to be truly heard by those we love most.”

I will never forget this book.

Earnest. Honest. Bare. Heartbreaking. Harrowing. Chaotic. Lyrical. Captivating. Statements crafted aesthetically. Story delivered with thought, care and grace – story of struggle and survival, of language, of the world in Vietnam and USA, of facing the truth, of being one's true self.

I had a beautiful time reading this.

What a beautiful, sad book. So many beautiful sentences used to tell the story of the hard way of growing up when you‘re born in Vietnam, your family traumatized, and start a new life in America, where you are yellow and gay, small and with not enough English vocabulary to stand up for yourself. Heartbreaking 💔

#ReadingUSA2019 #Connecticut #Booked2019 #Newin2019

Saturday reading

#AutumnLeaves #ScreamathonPhotoChallenge

@4thhouseontheleft

Just absolutely beautiful. Lovely prose, incredible heartbreak, honest through and through.

Hmm, not sure about this one. It was poetic and moving and sad and made me feel the feels for this guy who grew up not feeling secure I think, but I feel a bit like I didn‘t fully get it. I‘d be really interested to know if anyone else has read it and what they thought!

For the love of quiet first lines.

@JennyM I am reading this now, and savouring every sentence. 🥰

I picked this purely because of the title!!

Illuminating list of books and commentary from Ocean Vuong: https://lithub.com/ocean-vuong-the-10-books-i-needed-to-write-my-novel/

Cottage vacation + book + coffee + very sweet dog = Bliss

Medical update: two crowns on molars and the endodontist today (hello ice cream!), MRI Thursday 👍🏻

Tagged: amazing!! 4.5⭐️ beautiful, lyrical. Love the UK cover from Book Depository 🤩
TaWfT: 4⭐️ story good, fun, but Therese Plummer‘s narration makes it 10x better! #audiobook
#botm choices! Holla!
I‘m hoping this YA fiction on the opioid crisis, Heroine, will do what the adult fiction hasn‘t. So far, it is better.

Miss reading everything! 😘

This book. Ocean Vuong picked me up out of very long reading slump, beat the crap out of me with this story, then kissed me gently on the forehead with his words and imagery. There are sentences in this book that are literally breathtaking. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

https://wellreadneck.wordpress.com/2019/09/25/on-earth-were-briefly-gorgeous-oce...

Whoa, Ocean Vuong won a MacArthur “genius” grant! 🥳🥳🥳 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/25/625000-genius-grants-go-to-ocean-v...

This book: so beautifully written, so many layers, so powerful.

#TBRtemptations post #4! On the National Book Awards‘s fiction longlist! This is an intimate letter from a son addressed to his single mother. It is a novel of revealing one‘s self, the complicated relationship between mother and son, and understanding one‘s own familial background, in this case to Vietnam. The poet has written a novel that seems to be unanimously loved for its prose by reviewers. #blameLitsy #blameMrBook 😎

Poetic, lyrical prose. Could have underlined something on every page. One part of the brain would be admiring the writing and the other part would be 😱 at the story.
I loved this book, difficult content though and not for a happy, light read.

#setyoufree #redroseseptember
Loving this so far ❤️

I have so much I need to do today, but I‘m treating myself to a little read first. With Sansa keeping me company ♥️

4/5
Finished this beautiful book by the pool in equally stunning Napa. Ocean Vuong is known for his poetry so there‘s no argument that his prose would be just as exquisite. And it is. I highlighted and underlined many lines in this book. The only thing I did miss was more of the story. I wanted to know more of what happened and where it was going. Still, I would highly recommend because his writing is too good not to read.

#Booked2019

Written with exquisite beauty, Ocean Vugon pens his deepest thoughts and darkest secrets in the form of a letter to his illiterate mother. It‘s his awakening and purgatory. The letter is a tracing and circling of his family‘s history of war, trauma, violence, abuse and fierce loyalty. With the most painful honesty Ocean Vuogn shares what it means to be an “other” in the United States. 👇🏼

I force myself every now and then to read a book outside my usual favorite genres, thinking something will catch. I read 1/3 of it before realizing that there is a reason I have favorite genres.

Lots of mixed opinions on this book but so far I‘m in the LOVING it camp. Each paragraph is a lyrical delight full of pain, beauty and love. Can‘t wait to see what you think @TrishB

#unpopularopinion but I just can‘t with this one. Some of the writing was certainly beautiful but I can‘t read a novel‘s worth of meandering poetry 😐

I popped my Book Depository cherry! 🍒🍾📚 I really like the UK cover more, and I was surprised it was less expensive than Amazon.

I must admit this is not an easy read, it‘s disjointed, acutely raw & difficult to say the least. Even if I re-read several times, I‘d still be grasping for comprehension. But, something in me craves this type of literature. It‘s meaty, full of body, stretches me as a reader, takes me out of my comfort zone, & ultimately pushes me towards awareness. This book although not rateable for me at the moment, will be staying with me for quite some time.

Stopped by to pick up my 2 holds ..and this happened 🤣🤣🤣

Isn‘t that the saddest thing in the world, ma? A comma forced to be a period? 😭😭😭

Evening reading with my boy. 🥰

I didn‘t know if this book could survive the anticipation I had for it, but it met even my very high expectations. I‘m not sure when I last read prose this beautiful, every single page could have been a poem in its own right. So soft and tender and sad, I think this was even better than night sky with exit wounds somehow.

#7days7covers #covercrush #day1

Thank you for the tag @KarenUK @CarolynM 😘

I‘ve posted this a few weeks ago, but I love the cover so much, here it is again 🍁 ❣

If you have time and want to join in, I‘d love to see your fave covers over the next 7 days @Tanisha_A @Chelsea.Poole

This book!!! 😭😭😭 I‘ve been reading a bit at a time and trying to just...let it wash over me. But now I‘ve got four days to read it...halfway through. Gotta get it done because Libby tells me 22 people are waiting for THIS ONE COPY.

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain

1. Tagged book and Quichotte by Salman Rushdie, also annotating Underground Railroad for lmpbc

2. Maple I guess, but i don‘t really drink coffee or hot drinks with lots of syrups etc in so I‘ve never had a psl even though I love autumnal basic things, I only really drink black coffee

3. ‘I hate and love your battered hands‘ from tagged book, it‘s absolutely beautiful and very harrowing

🙌✨

This book really hit me in the feels! 💕 The protagonist is a young Vietnamese man who is writing to his illiterate mother. This is a story about family, love, loss, sexuality, memory, substance abuse, and heritage. The prose almost reads like poetry, it's just so beautiful and heartbreaking. 💕📚

As you can see, Roxas wasn't impressed! 😁😸 #catsoflitsy #littenkitten

Bedtime reading... I couldn‘t resist the hype on this one!

Ps. If anyone has tips on keeping your cats from chewing up every last house plant, please share 😜

More #library holds came in! And here I am stuck reading about research methods in social work.

I‘m in Burlington for the next few days for the Association of Rural and Small Libraries conference. I‘ve already hit both bookstores and had dinner with friends 😀. Any other Litsy librarians here?

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 I‘m gonna go try and piece my shattered heart back together after reading this. I‘m not sure the pieces will ever fit the same way again.

Our latest episode of Books On The Go 🎧 is up! Amanda and I discuss ‘On Earth We‘re Briefly Gorgeous‘. Have you read it? We‘d love to hear your thoughts. So much to love, but it‘s not your typical novel. 🤔

We were exchanging truths, I realized, which is to say, we were cutting one another.

Heartbreaking autobiographical fiction in the form of a letter by a gay son to his illiterate Vietnamese American mother: “the very impossibility of your reading this at all makes my telling it possible.” It‘s told in tender fragments: “I‘m not telling you a story so much as a shipwreck—the pieces floating, finally legible.” It‘s a yearning for belonging, and a coming to terms with mental illness, queerness & loss. It‘s gorgeous. #LGBTQ

Yes, there was a war. Yes, we came from its epicentre. In that war, a woman gifted herself a new name—Lan—in that naming claimed herself beautiful, then made that beauty into something worth keeping. From that, a daughter was born, and from that daughter, a son.

All this time I told myself we were born from war—but I was wrong, Ma. We were born from beauty.

You and I, we were Americans until we opened our eyes.

They will want you to succeed, but never more than them. They will write their names on your leash and call you ‘necessary,‘ call you ‘urgent.‘