Welcome to Litsy!

Halfway through 2025 round-up!

I‘ve had a super strong non-fic year. I‘ve read so much that I‘ve loved. 36% of my books have been NF. Here are my favorites:

1. Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel
2. Eight Bears by Gloria Dickie
3. Bite by Bite by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
4. The Witching Year by Diana Helmuth
5. The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green (audio)

Titles tagged below!

“I am writing in order to take charge of the story of my childhood and my childlessness; and in order to locate myself, if not within a body, then in the narrow space between one letter and the next, between the lines where the ghosts of meaning are.”

“You need to find yourself, in the maze of social expectation, the thickets of memory: just which bits of you are left intact?”

“I was (and am) unsure about how I am related to my old self, or to myself from year to year.”

“It was afternoon: that time, around three o‘clock, when a day seems to pause and yawn, before stretching itself and ambling towards teatime.”

“Since then I have always been addicted to something or other, usually something there‘s no support group for. Semicolons, for instance, I can never give up for more than two hundred words at a time.”

Have you ever wanted to burst into a round of applause at the end of a book? God, this was so good.

Hilary Mantel‘s memoir isn‘t especially uplifting. Her story is shaped by institutional — specifically, medical — neglect. It makes the pleasure I took from being welcomed inside her brain, where I could luxuriate in the craft of her sentences, feel almost shameful. I‘m choosing to feel wonderstruck (and a bit star-struck), instead.

What a writer!

“It is time for me to take up skipping…I don‘t want to but I have to try. I‘d rather turn the rope and say the rhyme than skip…

[Hopscotch] is better than skipping, but I find that when I try to stand on one leg, the pressure of my thoughts pushes me over.”

Perhaps this explains why I‘ve never had any luck with sports? 😅

This is the memoir Mantel wrote back in 2003. This focuses mainly on her childhood and I loved those parts, learning more about her childhood and family situation. There‘s also some parts about her growing up and her 20s, all her experiences with pain due to endometriosis.

11th book #Spookoween @TheSpineView #Falling4Books @Read4life #RushAthon @Andrew65 @DieAReader @GHABI4ROSES #2003 #192025 @Librarybelle #BookSpin September @TheAromaofBooks

This was a buddy read with @Reviewsbylola , and the conversation was just as enjoyable as the book! Mantel‘s memoir covers her childhood, her chronic illness, and early marriage. Both of us enjoyed how much she played with language in her childhood chapters. (Plus she used one of my favorite #weirdwords horripilation = goosebumps!) It‘s always interesting to read other women‘s illness journeys and how frustrating misdiagnosis can be!

per.siflage
noun FORMAL
light and slightly contemptuous mockery or banter.
"an air of persiflage"

#weirdwords #weirdwordswefnedsay @CBee

#Anticipated5⭐️Read #BookBinge @Eggs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks I just started this memoir yesterday, but it‘s one I‘ve really been looking forward to, and I think I‘m reading it at the perfect moment for it to really speak to me.

I have to say I'm truly spoiled on my birthdays. This year was no exception. My #litsypenpal is the best! Simon thought so too so he decided to model all the goodies. Shortbread, yummy Mickey Mouse tea, honey spoons, jelly beans, face masks, and four books I'm very excited to read. Ohh I can't forget that dog cloth bag because it‘s now my favorite thing. It's got so many pockets! @Litlady you are amazing! Thank you from the bottom of my heart! ❤️

From my TBR. #Giving #NovemberNarrative @Eggs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

Excuse me while I have a #nonfiction moment! 😂👍🏻📚🎧💙

This is the Megiest Meg thing I could do...says everyone who follows me on Litsy. Lol.

HELP BOOK DEPOSITORY USERS!!

I ordered tagged book (Hilary Mantel‘s memoir), and I got a book about Catholic meditations on infertility. 🤯🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️ What‘s the best way of contacting BD? The form? I couldn‘t find a phone number.

Has this happened to anyone else? What‘s their policy?

Since three things I've read recently have mentioned this book, I had to find out what all the fuss was.

Though very different from her novels, Hilary Mantel‘s memoir was still a treat to read. Her writing is beautiful and this memoir feels like a very honest and raw account, while also holding back a lot on specific details. I had hoped to learn more about her time living in Saudi Arabia and her writing process. But I don‘t think an in depth account of the things the reader wants to know is ever what this memoir set out to be.

I don‘t think a chapter of a book has ever had such a powerful affect on me. I feel so sad and yet angry reading descriptions of medical professionals and others dismiss such an amazing, admirable woman as a hysterical attention seeker. Instead of listening to her and taking what she has to say seriously. I hope they all look back in shame.

I‘m almost halfway through Hilary Mantel‘s memoir and I am really enjoying it so far. I fell in love with Mantel‘s writing when I read Wolf Hall (which I‘m planning to reread this year). Although the style is different here, it‘s still so different from anyone else with that same sense of magic which captivated me before.
This is my first memoir, so I didn‘t know what to expect. But now I‘m thinking they are a genre I should explore.

Unfortunately, I have to say that the first part of the book was boring and such detailed descriptions of childhood adventures and reflections always raise question in me ... but I find the second part more interesting (the main focus is on her illnes), especially from the point of view, how the women with unclear/undefined health problems were treated in the 1970s.

#24in48 #readathon
Lunch date with book number four 😋

I think that this is my last book haul for this year 😁

You come to this place, mid-life. You don‘t know how you got here, but suddenly you‘re staring fifty in the face. When you turn and look back down the years, you glimpse the ghosts of other lives you might have led...You think of the children you might have had but didn‘t. When the midwife says, ‘It‘s a boy,‘ where does the girl go? When you think you‘re pregnant, and you‘re not, what happens to the child that has already formed in your mind?

• Good morning book lovers. I am so very tired this morning from lack of sleep but it's a busy week preparing for Wales in FOUR DAYS! I'm pretty excited. I have yet to decide on which book I will be reading alongside Escape to Pirate Island. That one will be a purely bedtime read so I need something to be able to read now and then throughout the day. Anyway, what're you reading right now? ✨ #booklover #bookblogger #bookishfeatures #bibliophile

Part 2 of my Slightly Foxed birthday book haul!

The 5 books for Q9 charity shop has struck again!

I already have a copy of Shadow of the Wind but this is a better one. The Grisham is for my mother-in-law.

Of course I bear no personal responsibility for this.

Absolutely none.