Welcome to Litsy!

I thought “Bunny” was darkly weird, but this is more so! Exhausting, intense, darkly funny, and I read it with horror, too. All‘s Well has a clever connection with a couple of Shakespeare‘s plays. It‘s a poke at the perception of chronic pain, and of the health care industry. There‘s a good dose of the supernatural (or is it painkillers?) at play, that left me confused in parts. I think this makes a good book club read-lots to discuss. Quite ⬇️

“A display of wellness. That's what's called for in this moment. A performance of health so that the audience understands. The audience will only know how deeply you have been in pain when they see how hard you dance afterwards.“
Theater performer turned college theater director Miranda Fitch is suffering from crippling chronic pain following an accident during a performance of MacBeth (or Mackers or The Scottish Play: the superstitions

Some of the Shakespeare allusions in this are a bit heavy handed, but others are pretty clever.

Recent acquisitions

Overall an okay reading month. Nothing I read this month blew me away except for All's Well which I highly recommend to everyone! I managed to finish my #bookspin and #doublespin, though, so I'm taking the win!

@TheAromaofBooks

March wrap-up! I finished 10 books, but unfortunately several were disappointments. Still found some good ones, though!
🥇All's Well
🥈Assembly
🥉All of Us Villains

Book 48🎧 5⭐️
Another amazing book by Awad! Includes an ode to Bunny too🐰💕
This was so good! I love the “is/about” Shakespeare stories (10 things I hate about you/The taming of the shrew) and this was a fantastic version of Alls well that ends well!

With Awads classic dark humour and satirical writing, you really feel what it‘s like to live as someone with chronic pain, see how they are treated. I appreciated her showing this raw side of pain.

Creepy!!!! I realize that if I knew enough Shakespeare I would recognize all the references, but I think Stephen King also influenced the writing. I thought of Thinner as I listened. And if I hear, "Am I right?" I may just lose my head as Ms. Fitch seems to on opening night. How annoying.

This #ToB22 book has elements of All's Well That Ends Well and Macbeth mixed into a wonderfully crazy story about a high-school drama teacher suffering from chronic pain. Miranda tells her students that Shakespeare's play is both a tragedy and a comedy, and one can say the same of this version of All's Well.

I wouldn't recommend this novel to everyone, but I really loved it myself.

#BookSpinBingo @TheAromaofBooks

Just in time before this book is up against The Trees in the #Tob22 I finished it. And I like it a lot more than I thought I would. Miranda is a theater director who suffers chronic pains and lives on painkillers. When she meets three weird men in a bar, all‘s well. No, not really. The book becomes a mess after that but I liked it.
No match for The Trees though, if you‘d ask me!

#Tob22 #pop22 #MisleadingTitle

March TBR, Part 2! A few days into the month & I keep adding books to my monthly TBR. I'll have to see how realistic or unrealistic it is in my monthly wrap-up 📚

After hating Bunny, I had no intention of reading this book but did so for TOB completeness. I hated the first part with it‘s tedious, one-dimensional characters but pushed forward since I knew it would change. I actually found that I enjoyed parts of it and wanted to keep going, though the weirdest sections didn‘t work for me. On no planet should this ever best Percival Everett‘s masterful The Trees.

First third is scary good full of overwhelming physical pain and it was almost more than I could bear. And then it almost became deliciously fun in contrast, exploring the reverse. Yowza this is darkly comic and manic. The ending is supposed to be unsure and unresolved, so that fits. 🥴 I liked it getting there, so it gets a pick. 🌹🥀
#tob2022

I really enjoyed this exploration of chronic illness and how we deal with it, the callous tyranny of "mind over matter," the deals we attempt to make with ourselves and the world, and the ways that we support others (or not). There's some Shakespeare, too, but at the level that I appreciate it (I like the themes and I like the use of language/wordplay, but the plays don't usually engage me for the duration of a performance). #ToB2022

Here's Silo wondering if he should be familiar with the Shakespeare play to fully appreciate the tagged book or if having elaborate whiskers and a regal profile is sufficient.

Worked on my February #BookSpinBingo list. Giving two slots each to my remaining #TOB2022 titles. Finished Intimacies this morning, watched some 🏈 (Congrats to Cinci), and now starting All‘s Well. It‘s due at the library on 2/2 😬
I did manage both the January Spin and the Double! I did not hit any bingos. And yet, I read 12 books! 🤔🤷🏻‍♀️

My #tob22 picks in order thus far:

1. The Trees
2. Klara and the Sun
3. The Sentence
4. All‘s Well
5. The Book of Form and Emptiness
6. The Echo Wife
7. Intimacies
8. Beautiful World, Where are you
9. In Concrete
10. When We Cease to Understand the World.

Where am I wrong? I can take it. 😂

Matrix and Nervous System are in progress. If I finish everything including the remaining play-ins, I‘ll give No One is Talking another go. 🙂

This is a tough one to rate, really wavering between so-so and pick so going with a low pick. Totally bizarre with lots of smart Shakespearean references and other devices that were mostly over my head. The portrayal of chronic pain was fascinating and terrifying, and gave me the humbling feeling that fiction isn‘t so far from reality for many. Book 7 down #TOB22

The surrealism in this #tobshortlist novel is what I would imagine coming down from a bad high feels like. Certain aspects are expertly done. Awad really captures the experience of being a chronic pain sufferer, the misogyny that still exists when trying to seek treatment, and the disbelief by friends and family faced by many with chronic pain. The first 100 pages was fantastic. Then the book became a bit unmoored, in a WTF did I read kinda way.

I had to sit with this for a bit to really decide how I felt.

The main character annoyed me and I had a hard time even caring about her pain. I do appreciate the author addressing chronic pain and how doctors often dismiss a person's complaints. Also, the clever connection to Shakespeare saved a lot of this story for me.

I'm giving this a pick for its creativity, and I enjoyed most of it, but I didn't love it like I had hoped. #ToB2022 #ToB22

This book is a bit bonkers. Usually I love the weird stories, but I am really struggling here. I‘m definitely getting deep into the surreal section, and I don‘t like it.

Can someone tell me if it just keeps going down a rabbit hole? Miranda has turned into a major asshole. I‘m going to finish, because it‘s a #tobshortlist book that also fills a lot of prompts. But I may start skimming.

Although All's Well is well-written and Miranda is certainly a vivid character, I mostly found the book an exercise in frustration. I found Miranda‘s complaints about her disappointments in life grating, and although I could sympathize with her chronic pain (and her truly terrible doctors), I found it hard to sympathize with her disdain for her students. And while the book is clearly intended to be humorous, I didn‘t think it was all that funny.

Well, I did not end up reading next to the cats earlier today, but now I am settled in to my favorite chair next to the fireplace, with my new cozy sweater and favorite socks!

About 100 pages into this one and still on the fence about how I feel. As someone who dealt with chronic pain from endometriosis for years, I hope this book does justice to the subject of the obstacles chronic pain sufferers face.

#tob #tobshortlist

Another twisty novel from Awad. If you like weird, this one is for you. A former actress with a crippling chronic illness is trying to stage All‘s Well That Ends Well at the university where she works, but the mutinous students are dead-set on doing Macbeth instead. She makes a deal with a trio of strange men she meets in a local pub and it looks like things might be going her way for a change - or are they?

Although I‘m not quite sure what happened at the end (🤷🏻‍♀️), I really liked this dark and sinister tale of the female experience with pain and the value placed on youthful beauty. I didn‘t read Bunny, but now I‘m going to have to check it out. #ToB2022

There is such daring to Awad's writing I cant help but admire it. Because this novel (like Bunny) is unapologetically nuts. Painridden drama professor Miranda, makes a proverbial deal with the devil, not unlike a certain doomed Scottish king. And then strange things begin to happen. Playing with fantasy lets Awad explore how crazy pain can make us and the lengths we would go to avoid it. Tying it all to Shakespeare is just plain clever. As 👇

I wasn‘t sure what to expect with this book. It did get weird. No doubt. But I really enjoyed the writing and the twists and turns. The descriptions of chronic pain and useless treatments were particularly visceral. And it made me want to read Shakespeare. A win for me.

#tob #tob2022 #tob22

01. All‘s Well; Libertie
02. All‘s Well
03. New books coming from Hanya Yanagihara and Emily St. John Mandel

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain

How I'm spending the evening. Happy New Year everyone! 🥂🎉🎊 Wishing us all lots of peace, joy, and good books in 2022!

If you loved Bunny (as I did), I think you‘ll like this. Not as left-field bizarre but heavy on the “what” and “is any of this really happening” that Awad does so well.

Definitely liked this more than the play it pays homage to - All‘s Well That Ends Well - but I think it makes sense to read/get the gist of that play before reading. Odd? Yes. Satisfying? In its own way. #ShakespeareReadalong

12-13-21: My 125th finished book of 2021! This one was weird!! A woman, Miranda, suffering chronic pain and abusing her pain meds, while directing a production of All‘s Well That Ends Well by Shakespeare at a small college, meets 3 strange men who change her life and her pain threshold. This book felt like a fever dream! I was waiting for the character to wake up and say it never happened. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 👍🏼📖#️⃣1️⃣2️⃣5️⃣

About to start my 100th (& probably final) book of 2021. What a crazy year. 🙈🤷🏻‍♀️😂

I only read this because it‘s on the #TOB22 shortlist. Every year the Tournament of Books provides me with at least one book where, when finished, I scratch my head and say, “what the hell WAS that?” If you want to read an exquisite account of living with chronic pain, the first 100 pages is perfection. After that it goes off the rails and I‘m not sure what the point of it all is. It‘s not a pan, but it‘s not one I‘d recommend to anyone either.

It‘s hard to review such an odd book, though I did not find it as odd as Bunny, which I surprisingly liked. This one I liked too because it is so different. Unreliable narrator, suffering from chronic pain, who meets three mysterious men who offer her a different path. It‘s hard to understand everything taking place, but I could also feel the levels of despair and elation throughout the novel.

Be prepared for an odd adventure with this one!

I would say this book is only so-so, except there were some genuinely riveting moments of tension, and I can‘t take that away from it. Most of these moments didn‘t come to much though, for me, unfortunately.

It also made me think about some cool stuff regarding characters/characterization, with much of this being tied into Shakespeare specifically. (I love Shakespeare.)

Awad is a cool writer, but I don‘t think I‘d read more of her work.

And now for a totally random book that the only reason I‘m reading it is ‘cause my godmother wants me to.

It‘s fine; it‘s not like I have a near-endless list of novels I want to read for myself.

(I‘m actually liking it pretty well so far (I‘m also a good ways through it). It‘s much better than most stuff I find myself reading because people lend it to me.)

This is one weird book. It has its good points - sharp, darkly amusing, insightful writing. Awad just nails the experience of chronic illness and pain. But then it takes a turn and we go from one extreme to another. The story gets more nebulous, blurring the lines of reality. It just got exhausting and repetitive - all the extremes. It would have made a bold novella or short story. Very bizarre.

There is something brilliant about this that I can't quite put my finger on. And I definitely preferred Bunny. This is centered around a college production of All's Well That Ends Well and the director who is dealing with chronic pain. It's hard to explain but by the end, the author has your brain turned upside down and you wonder if you're the one that's crazy.

#BookSpinBingo free space
@TheAromaofBooks

Thank you so much @AmyG You are also my favorite swap partner. I love everything. The books are great, I'm especially looking forward to All's Well. The lotion and candle smell so good. The cards and and notepad are really cute. I'm looking forward to trying the coffee and I guess I need to bake cookies now 👻
#LLFS #LitsyLoveFallSwap
@Bookgoil @rsteve388

https://wellreadneck.wordpress.com/2021/08/10/alls-well-mona-awad/

So creepy

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I love Awad‘s writing - original, biting, trippy, and darkly funny, it‘s easy to get swept up in the madness. I enjoyed Miranda‘s voice and the commentary on the denial of women‘s pain, although as the book went on, her descent into mania made me inwardly cringe. (Maybe that‘s part of the point - how we often want to look away from other‘s suffering?) I‘m still not sure what was reality, but I know I‘ll be thinking about this for awhile.

I really wanted to like this book. I love Shakespeare and magical realism is typically my jam, but this one left me cold. I didn‘t like any of the characters and really didn‘t care about any of them. I‘m not even sure why I trudged on with it. I guess I kept hoping it would pay off but it just did not for me.

Ch 22

My newest #authenticbooks box! I loved the weirdness of Bunny and am looking forward to this! They sent a calla lily and white currant candle, a “bard of soap” (lol), a French rose clay facial bar, a sheet mask, a maple cinnamon cocktail mixer, a book playlist, and recipes! Ahh bring on the fall vibes!! 🍁 🍂 #bookmail

Like Mona Awad‘s last novel ‘Bunny‘, this novel is full of wit, and teeters on a thin line between fantasy and fiction. Dark academia, Shakespearean comedy/drama and strange magic combine in this fever dream of a novel. But it was Miranda‘s daily struggles that I found so heartbreaking. Awad brilliantly portrays the awful, dismissive way people (often women) with an ‘invisible‘ condition can be treated by medical professionals,and even loved ones.

This book was my staycation treat and while I didn‘t love it as much as I love Bunny (which I‘ve read 3x), it‘s still amazing. Sharp writing, dark magic, and Shakespearean themes are just three of the reasons I‘d recommend it. The first 100 pages are an almost too intense description of living with chronic pain - the writing is that masterful.

#literallydeadbookclub September pick and I‘m so exited!!

5🌟A riveting, kaleidoscopic ride! Centering on women's pain and the gas lighting of chronic pain in the medical profession and society in general. Love how Awad crafted Miranda's character. I related to Miranda's suffering and understood her contempt. Then as she starts losing her mind and will do anything to remain whole she transcends into villain hood and being in her head was like some sort of bad drug trip. #bookreview #canlit