Welcome to Litsy!

#ChristmasCrimeChallenge “set in winter”
#Roll100

A quirky kind of mystery, occasionally funny, sometimes sad.

“The psyche is our defense system - it makes sure we never understand what is going around us. It‘s main task is to filter information, even though the capabilities of our brain are enormous. For it would be impossible to carry the weight of this knowledge because every tiny particle of the world is made of suffering.”

Same.

Just finished Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. Excellent read.

🤣🔦 Truth

This is set in Poland very close to the border of the Czech Republic, and our main protagonist is a woman in her senior years. She hates her name and disregards most others as inappropriate, is massively into astrology, and flies the flag for animal rights. She is generally perceived as a batty old woman.

On the whole, I did like this. It does require more work from the reader than I'd typically give to the genre, but that's not a bad thing.

The writing is interesting but the story is boring me a little. I may come back to this one later. DNF
#roll100 pick off the TBR for now this was my #doublespin pick as well.

First book by this author and won‘t be my last. It‘s such a uniquely bookish feeling when I find a writers whose catalogue I know I‘ll devour. 📖

I wanted to love this book. I really did. I kept putting it down and picking it up. Maybe it was better suited for one long reading session.

This quoteable little gem was philosophical, convincing, well-characterised, and eccentric. I truly appreciated it.

It did, however, take me far too long to finish. I struggled to stay focused. My mind just kept wandering.

If you want to watch me say a variation of the above out loud, click on the link below 🤣🤣

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C-_WxKMoDHB/?igsh=anppNHlxM29rdGFn

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This one is slow going. Good, and very quotable, but slow going.

90% sure I know where this one is going.

To the point where if what I think is going to happen DOESN'T happen I will be surprised, and possibly disappointed.

We shall see...

I had no idea what to expect when I started this. In fact, 🤦🏻‍♀️ I was foolishly thinking it was a short story collection. Kept seeing it on many Best Of lists and somehow grabbed a copy from a LFL or the Library sale, can‘t recall. I am starting to wonder if I should do more prep. I usually don‘t read/enjoy mystery/thrillers because then I start thinking they will be fast and twisty. This is NOT. This is definitely on the literary side and ⬇️

My reaction to this book is like a pendulum. It swings one way and I‘m excited by the writing, how Tokarczuk delivered the story almost obliquely, from the POV of Janina who, perhaps admirably, doesn‘t seem to waiver from her righteous (?) moral system. It swings the other way, and I‘m in awe that I finished the book, having found Janina mean and often unsympathetic and the “mystery” predictable. ⬇️

It was incredibly difficult to capture a shot of a plow while driving from Nebraska south back home to Kansas but I liked the photo composition of this farming implement and decided to use it anyway. Starting this now.

Book club Saturday means book club prep Friday night. #FirstSaturdayReaders

Looks like Drive Your Plow 🚜 Over the 🦴 will give me the most advantage- especially if I can convince my book club to select it this month! 🤩
I also realized that I forgot to include my current reads on my list 🤦🏻‍♀️ so I might do some substitutions for ONLY those books I currently don‘t have in my possession. Is that against the rules?! 🥴 I randomly assigned them to those spots to make it less strategic 🤣

Lil slow ar the beginning but eventually was pretty engrossed. Shocked by the twist at the end. Really struck by how this narrator made me more sympathetic to my mom, a woman of thr same age. Seems like a book that's all about metaphors for big things. And per usual, interesting reading a book that's been translated from another language (polish). Rec from a reg at work, woogee.

Stumbled on this new-to-me weather word while reading the tagged this week and thought it was perfect for #weirdwordWednesday. I can‘t recall ever seeing this weather phenomenon as depicted, but I must have experienced it growing up near Scranton, PA and the Appalachians. One of those, “Oh there‘s a word for that,” moments. #weirdwords @CBee

Up next for book club. #FirstSaturdayReaders

❄️ , 🦌 , friendship
Roswell by Connie Willis
Sarah Winman
@Eggs

It's bookclub on Monday !

One of the most intriguing books I've ever read!
I was quite intimidated about reading it but it was incredibly written.
There were some important ideas about dualism between human and nature to consider...

My personal 2024 challenge - 6 books I have owned for quite some time, but not yet read.

This review really spoke to me.
Does anyone second it? 🙋🏻‍♀️

#12Booksof2023 June was vacation month so I read A LOT of books and I had trouble picking just one. Both were variations on the mystery genre.

@Andrew65

“To tell the truth, I liked the concept of evil people who eliminate each other, in a chain.”

“There are some things we may not understand, but we can sense them perfectly well.”

“Here my tears could flow, bathing my eyes and improving my sight. Maybe that‘s why I could see more than people with dry eyes.”

“The old method for dealing with bad dreams is to tell them aloud above the toilet bowl, and then flush them away.”

A curious fun book. Astrology, vegetarianism, hunting and murder (or is it revenge?). Logic is really not the main thing on the surface here. We follow Mrs. Duszejko's narrative, and she thinks about what the star charts say about when we will die, and the inheritance of acquired experience, and about all those innocent hunted critters in a hunting community.

(As an aside, I have some catching up to do.)

girl power

I‘ve been getting into this. My little-bit kitty thinks I‘m weird.

I enjoy how this story unfolds, and I sympathize strongly with the main character, even when I don't always agree with her. But then, this novel is nice because there's no one who's purely a "good" character, there's always some gray area about them, which I appreciate. I also appreciate the Blake references; it takes me back to undergrad. I am not sure that I would like mustard soup, though.

Audio Book listening while working on updating some files. I am listening to another murder mystery in my car. I thought it would be difficult to keep the books separate in my mind but so far no problem. Might be that the writing styles are light years apart. This book is more “literary” in style while the Kathy Reichs book is a very formulaic police procedural.

Picked up a few exciting books from the #ReadICT Book Swap (and forgot the books I meant to bring 🤦🏻‍♀️

With my trusty pie book bag #booksandpie #iLovePie

This was a good read, set in a remote Polish village. Bodies are being found in strange circumstances. Janina thinks she knows who did it. It is a mixture of crime and mystery, it's witty and concerns the welfare of animals.

I went to the theatre last night to see the stage production of this book. Oh my goodness it was amazing. The acting was brilliant, the interpretation was incredible. The set and costume design were so creative. It was fantastic. Highly recommend if it comes near you!

wondering if I should go vegetarian after reading this

#WomensHistoryMonth Recommendations

An older woman protagonist? Yes please. And she is grumpy and living alone? Future me!
I loved this book. Heavy fairy tale vibes with a dark thriller undertone, and immaculate writing and translation. This won the Man Booker prize, but don't let that scare you from picking it up, this is not as pompous or pretentious as many of the other winners. Just a wonderfully written complex story.

Our book Oscars episode just posted! We hand out awards for our 2022 reading list, including Best Book, Best Author, Best Setting, and Most Competant Character. It's a good time.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/063wTBD2xyM68U6OzsAjJI?si=V0t07Ek5QYGrThgHf8StM...

This has been on my TBR for so long and I really wanted to like it.. if not for the murder mystery, I would have probably bailed on it.. the writing was great and I liked parts of it.. I did want to read it to get to the bottom of the mystery but not my favourite read

My son recommended this to me as he thought I would love it and he was right! This is dark and unsettling while also being funny and I‘ve never read anything quite like it. I loved the main character being an eccentric middle aged woman (like me) which added extra weirdness to the whole story
4 ⭐️

This is one of my favorite books of the year so far. We review it in our latest episode but please, be mindful of the spoiler mark and don't listen beyond it if you haven't read the book!

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7qQpVHzUPla0EMf7m1CZrj?si=K-1pO74iT62yc8lt7AVKe...

Evocative, intriguing, dark and really quite funny. I found the story of Janina investigating the strange deaths of her neighbours both fun and thought provoking. 8/10

A bit early on #tbt because tomorrow is going to be a mess of a day

I really enjoyed this dark winter read. It isn't often we are gifted with older women as the main character in a book that isn't just silly. And I really appreciated that in this book. I also just loved the writing and how things twisted and turned, to the point where you are not totally sure who to trust. So well done, perfect winter read.

Well, I can see why Tokarczuk won a Nobel prize. This is so different than any other mystery I've read in the past, it's weird and dark and misleading and weird and frustrating and unsettling and weird...

September was not a great reading month for me. Will October be better? I doubt it. But I‘m gonna try with this #OctoberTBR.

3⭐ as I did enjoy reading the book, but I don't really get the attraction that most reviewers express towards the MC, who I found unlikeable and unsympathetic through most of the story. While I did feel sorry for her, I don't think my emotional response was what the author intended, as after the initial couple of chapters I didn't feel she was the lovable eccentric being presented. The 'twist' became obvious, and I found the end unsatisfying.

"I knew what books she liked...gloomy horror stories, Gothic novels with crumpled covers featuring a drawing of a Bat. Perverted monks, severed hands that murder people, coffins flushed out of graveyards by floods. Evidently reading this sort of thing confirmed her in the conviction that we are not living in the worst of worlds, and taught her optimism."