Welcome to Litsy!

Periodically I decide I‘m going to read a book that I‘ve started multiple times over the years but never finished. Those decisions led me to finally finish In Cold Blood and Moby Dick, both of which I liked. This time, it‘s Beloved. I‘ve owned it since it came out and started it many times. I bought a new copy for incentive. Next might be Clive Barker‘s The Great and Secret Show.

Should you ever want to be wrecked by a book, ask Toni Morrison to read "Beloved" to you!
It's a brutal, harrowing story beautifully written and her warm voice dials up the contrast further. Goodness knows what took me so long to get to this but I surely won't forget it in a hurry. I don't want to be flippant and call it a book hangover: this is amongst the most powerful books I've read. I am properly shaken by it.

Sethe is a runaway slave. Having sent her 3 kids before her, the youngest still breastfeeding, she gives birth to another daughter during her escape. A few months after reuniting with her family they find her, when she sees the dreaded white man approaching to capture them she kills one of her babies and tries to kill her other children to spare them the life of slavery. Years later the ghost of her daughter comes back in physical form and ⬇️

#PulitzerWinner 🏆

#Bibliophile 🎧💌❤️📚🤓📖🐛

#BookNerd 🤓📚💙

Today Changing Hands , part of the banned books display . 😡I found I owned or read most of them . Picked up 2 I hadn‘t read .

Powerful gut wrenching narrative. It is the period of Reconstruction, when Sethe and her daughter Denver live in a haunted house at 124 Bluestone Road. The baby ghost doesn‘t cause too much trouble. Sethe and Denver are shunned by their neighbors until Paul D and then a mysterious young woman appear at the door. Sethe tries to make a family of the four, but her memories and dark forces hinder her efforts. Brutal and beautiful. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I think the tagline pretty much says it all:
https://bookriot.com/banned-historical-fiction-books/

Well, I can mark 2024 as the year I finally read Beloved. And the fact that it‘s read by the dearly departed Ms. Morrison herself felt like a gift. I thought it was terrific. I‘m a bit sad I never read it in school but am happy to have read it now.

#SpringSkies
#onewordtitle
@Eggs
@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

I read this for my horror bookclub earlier tonight. This book is an ocean of sorrow. It‘s based off an actual woman who killed her child rather than let them be a slave. You know what she got charged and convicted of? Destruction of property. In the book, Sethe and her daughter, Denver live at 124 Bluestone Rd. A haunted house if there ever was one. A man from Sethe‘s past shows up and one thinks maybe the ghost is gone. That is until a young👇🏼

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Finally, my first Toni Morrison. I know, I‘m ashamed that it took this long, too. Formerly enslaved woman Sethe is haunted by a malevolent ghost believed to be her eldest daughter. Morrison uses elements of magical realism combined with lyrical prose to tell this story inspired by the true life of Kentucky slave Margaret Garner. So powerful.

#HoldingHands #LuckyInLove @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks @Eggs

September 17 #IdiomInsight Apple of my eye. @Eggs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

#IdiomInsight #AppleOfMyEye

“… sentences rolling out like pie dough.”

#pieLIT #PieandBooks #iLovePie
#BelovedTrilogyPart1 #HoppingGnomeBookClub
#DogsofLitsy #EstherFest
#vacation #colorado

Books & Pie
📚 & 🥧

I bought the three books while looking for copy of Jazz by T.Morrison at a used bookstore. I have a library copy of Jazz and an abridged audiobook (WHY?!? Ugh, abridged?) - hope to purchase my own copy. I also have an eBook from Libby of Beloved w/ 17 days remaining on my loan. I like Katherine Center and the October bookclub book is Grendel. Books! 📚
Pie is a mini Peach with tree cutout topping. #iLovePie #CaresPieShow

Everybody should read this book at some point in their life. Whilst it is not the best book to read - the prose is a little all over the place and the structure isn‘t perfect - the messages it conveys and the impact of its story will move readers for generations to come.

30 book recommendations in 30 days...

Day 10: I generally don't recommend this as the first Toni Morrison to read as I feel there is a better progression through her work, but this is a masterpiece. If you have already read The Bluest Eye, Sula, and/or Song of Solomon, then you definitely should read Beloved. #30recsin30days

“This is not a story to pass on.” Yet that is exactly what Morrison does… sharing a narrative about the horrors of slavery and how history has tried to move on without ever coming to terms with its grotesque awfulness. This beautifully written book is essential American Literature and the story must be passed on.

#MarchMagic
@Eggs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks
#AuthorofColor

Just a highlighted few of many accolades for this momentous woman:
1988: Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Beloved
1993: Nobel Prize in Literature
2000: National Humanities Medal
2011: Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction
2012: Presidential Medal of Freedom
2016: PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction
2023: Featured on a USPS Forever stamp

Current Read #BlackHistoryMonth

We‘ll see how I like this one.

#snowflake #snowflakes #papersnowflakes #1001

I can‘t lie this was confusing and felt like it took forever to read. I‘m not sure if I understood it but I think it was good

I enjoyed this one more than 'The Song of Solomon'. I couldn't put it down. History has its extremely ugly parts, the atrocities are more terrifying than the ghost story itself, but the novel is a work of art. I enjoyed all of it, the spectacular writing, the character building, the alternating timelines which gradually revealed the tragedy concealed by the past and the magic realism used to unveil the magnitude of the drama.

✨ Mystery
✨ I do like my True Crime so I‘d have to go with serial killer for nonfiction, but haunted house for fiction.
✨ I‘ll be forever haunted by tagged. Also loved The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld and The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld.

#ThoughtfulThursday
@MoonWitch94

1. Beloved (honourable mention to comic Bitch Planet)
2. Butler, Octavia E. (HM - Ray Bradbury)
3. Better Off Ted (true TV gem)
4. Tie b/w Blue Oyster Cult, The Beatles, & Beastie Boys (HM - Billie Eilish & Billy Idol)
5. Back to Black by Amy Winehouse (HM - Brushy Mountain Conjugal Trailer by Old Crow Medicine Show)
#manicmonday #LetterB @CBee
These may, or may not, be representative, but it's what is coming to mind atm 🤷‍♀️

#Alphabetgame #LetterB @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

My A list of “B” books:
Becoming-Obama
Begin Again-Glaude
Being Mortal-Gawande
Being Wrong-Schultz
Beowulf in the Beach-Murnighan
Bewilderment-Powers
Beyond Black-Mantel
Bible (I‘m not religious)
The Bible Unearthed-Finkelstein/Silberman
The Blazing World-Hustvedt
Blood Meridian-McCarthy
The Book of Illusions-Auster
The Book of Not-Dangarembga

Beloved stands above them all. 🙂

#alphabetgame #letterB

Beloved is a masterpiece of storytelling, as the tale of Sethe stays with you long after you finish reading. As a former slave, she goes to extreme ends rather than return to slavery. Through an exploration of the consequences of her actions, Morrison lays bare the horrific impact slavery had.

@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

This was a powerful, deeply intense read. I can only imagine the emotional labor that went into telling this story. Thanks to a white woman in 2021, it is in the spotlight. She complained to the school board that it gave her child nightmares. I‘m willing to bet she has never read this book and has no desire to do so. Folx, this is how it was in the days of the evil institution of slavery. It is hard, it is ugly, it is shameful. But it has

The tale of Sephe‘s family free from slavery dealing with the consequences of her actions to save her children from becoming slaves again.

This book is heartbreaking and devastating to know that the harsh, repugnant treatment of African Americans in the United States happened in real life and people should never have to deal with the trauma of not owning their own life.

This is such a tough book. The horrors and lasting effect of slavery… it‘s hard to read. Or listen to in my case (though I have to say, Toni Morrison‘s voice is like velvet). I doubt I picked up on half the metaphors and such, and will likely read this again and again.

This is a moving book that is classified as a horror story of ghosts. The real horror though, is how it compels you to gain a little more understanding of the horror of the South during slavery. To me, what has happened to Black people in the United States is worse than the Holocaust in terms of the suffering that has been endured.

This is a wonderful LitHub article on opening lines. Jonathan Lee cites Morrison's Beloved, a book that is still TBR. I still recall the opening of Song of Solomon, years later:
https://lithub.com/jonathan-lee-on-hooking-a-reader-with-the-first-line/

#tonimorrison #weremember @Eggs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

I read this in my American Lit class back in college and throughly enjoyed it.

#ToniMorrison #WeRemember 🌹💔

#BookNerd 🤓💙📚

Beloved named by Bookriot as 1 of "20 most influential historical fiction books of all time." Pic of Toni Morrison from a visit to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. #WeRemember #ToniMorrison @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks @Eggs

#weremember #tonimorrison @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks @Eggs

Beautiful storytelling with genuine characterisations gradually unveiling the difficulties and torment experienced by Sethe and her family.
Highly recommended.

Round-up of the books of March.
Fiction - 10
Non-fiction- 5
DNF - 1 - The Astronaut's guide to living on earth by Chris Hadfield (I was inspired by his attitude and commitment but found it repetitive throughout the book. So much so it made me lose interest in the space stories)

#BOTM
The tagged book was my favourite March read by far. Reviewed on book profile.

Beloved is slaying me in a different way as a woman than it did as a 17-year-old at Yale. Looking forward to discussing it with you on the #podcast.
This quote is from her introduction, where she discussed how the novel came to be and her intentions for it. I decorated this way because I discover plants move the story forward, generate “rememory “, hurt and heal, bring people together and tear flesh. The roses die along the route to the carnival.

One of my top 20 most beloved books.

Beloved smacks of a book that needs to be re-read over and over again to be appreciated fully. I wanted to love it outright; everyone said that I would and that I should… but I didn‘t, really. In fairness, lockdown probably wasn‘t the right time for me to read it. There‘s some future me who will re-read it and find it completely wonderful and brilliant. Full review: https://keepingupwiththepenguins.com/beloved-toni-morrison/

Me and Toni Morrison, we‘ve never been a good match. I know it‘s an unpopular opinion but this was the fourth of her books I tried and again it didn‘t work. Beloved asks too much from me. I can‘t seem to follow along and all time jumping and magical realism feels forced to me. Maybe some other time… #1001books

#WeeklyForecast 43/21

In progress are The Promise (which I am enjoying a lot) and Beloved. Toni Morrison and I are not a good match - again. But I‘ll stick with it a bit longer.
I still have The Nothing Man lined up and am adding a translation of At Night‘s End, an Israelian book quite popular here at the moment.

#scarathlon #screamathon #teamHendrix week 2 Diversify your Horror Shelf

I was surprised when I learned that Beloved was listed many places as a horror book.

Not your traditional horror, but worth the read for the classical complexities.

I wish I would have read this in school so I could have more analysis and discussion around it to really understand. It is a classic and Morrison is a God of writing but I don't think I really understand this. Blaming myself not the book.

Joining in #outstandingoctober readathon with @Andrew65 getting those #scarathlon points for #teamhendrix
I only finished one gorgeous book over the week but am close to finishing 2 more so my goal is to finish those and read a novella and one other book
Beloved
Once There Were Wolves
Ogers
Winter Counts

Treat yourself to this great deal today! 😃

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000TWUTYG/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_navT_a_NCAHJE93QJ1MRNV15Y9...