Welcome to Litsy!

[T]he fact paralyses the intention, gives it something like a malaise producing immobility: in order to make it innocent, it freezes it. This is because myth is speech stolen and restored. Only, speech which is restored is no longer quite that which was stolen: when it was brought back, it was not put exactly in its place. It is this brief act of larceny, this.moment taken for surreptitious faking, which gives mystical speech a benumbed look.

In a single day, how many non-signifying fields do we cross? Very few, sometimes none. Here I am, before the sea; it is true that it bears no message. But the beach, what material for semiology! Flags, slogans, signals, sign-boards, clothes, suntan even, which are so many messages to me.

Reading now

"Writers are on holiday, but they're Muse is awake, and gives birth non-stop" - Roland Barthes

I highlighted this passage around 15 (15?!) years ago and it still speaks to me now.

I enjoyed this more than I expected. It took a bit for me to get into the style of Barthes‘ writing (and John Lee‘s narration), but once I did, I found the essays in part one to be well though out, but also kind of fun (I can see why he was a big influence on Susan Sontag). Part two is more theoretically weighty, but definitely felt applicable to our times. Will probably want to read a physical copy to dig deeper into those ideas. #audiobook

Because I‘m enjoying intellectual audiobooks. What better to do on a thundery Friday evening?

I really enjoyed the first half of this book, I had a mixed time with Myth Today and what I understood I liked mostly but I need to find some online help and go through sections of that again, still a very interesting read!

This essay is really testing my brain, I will work you out and it will take most of the afternoon

Picking up some nonfiction and I've heard good things about this so I'm very excited

Thanks to Marie Kondo, I purged most of my literary/critical theory books. But I did hold on this this little volume by Barthes.
It's a bit dated now, but it's a good reminder that #mythologies continue to be embedded in our language and culture. A myth for Bathes is anything historical that we have come to view as natural or "just the way things are."
#aprilbookshowers @RealLifeReading

A rather thoughtful book haul