Welcome to Litsy!

Looking at my selections for the bracket, I‘m feeling pretty decently about my reading year. Who wants to be my #AuldLangSpine partner? Too soon? 😜

Death Valley handily stole the show in July. 🌵

July was my slowest reading month yet, and that was absolutely because I downloaded the Scrabble app. Don‘t worry: I‘ve since deleted it and have taken back my life. 😅

Death Valley was my favorite July read followed by Blue Sisters. A strong fiction month, which has been rare this year!

#AWreads2025

did i vibe with that.. or did it vibe with me?
symbolism & #animism are doing heavy lifting here & if you hate metaphors, this desert will probably bury you.
🏜️ = existential isolation
🌵= wounded life but still alive
🫀= vulnerability, pain made visible
& a lot more! talking rocks, a bird & a wagon.
#magicrealism #surrealism #darkhumor #fiction
#weird #feverdream

this is reading like a fictional #memoir but with the personal depth of someone‘s Tumblr page
a bit of #darkhumor & existential dread 🙃

#magicrealism #literaryfiction
#grief #reflective #contemporary

I never read The Pisces, which had a lot of hype, & I was worried that I was starting with the wrong Broder when my book club selected this as July‘s title. I shouldn‘t have wasted my time with anticipatory disappointment because I was FAR from disappointed! I might just be basking in the glow of finishing a book I truly loved but this could be my favorite novel of the year. Funny, bizarre, & whip-smart. It tells grief (& love) but tells it slant.

A prayer (halfway into Death Valley), inspired by what I suspect will be my Holy Trinity of the year: Samantha Allen, Melissa Broder, & Krystelle Bamford.

Give me surrealist snark & the earnest, plumbed depths of depression. Give me something remarkably feminine & simultaneously subversive. Give me something beastly & something tender. Give me deserts & woods (be they Pacific Northwest or New England). And thank you for your gifts. 🙏🏻

“Love floods into me: oxytocin, dopamine, sticky souls, the cleave of spirits, norepinephrine, bone and light, a covenant behind the ribs — whatever love is made of.”

🎨: Georgia O‘Keeffe

An author takes a break from her father‘s death bed and her husband‘s chronic illness to stay in a Best Western and write. What follows is a bizarre and thoroughly amusing fever dream of self examination and anticipatory grief in Death Valley. So, so weird. Really liked it.

This was an odd little book, which delves into anticipatory grief in such a unique way. It focuses on connection and meaning in a world that seems to often skip over the “important“ stuff of life.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Broder is a gloriously odd one to predict! Loved Milk Fed; very much did not The Pisces. So, this could‘ve gone either way. An unnamed writer seeks temporary solace at a Best Western in the California high desert. A fever dream of anticipatory grief
and subjective reality ensues. Delightfully weird, funny, and moving.

When I was about 40% in and ready to bail, I took a break, read some reviews, and reminded myself that I really liked The Pisces. While I'm still not a huge fan of a novel that reads like a memoir and spending so much time inside the head of someone I'm not sure I like, I did end up appreciating this book. The second half redeems the first, and I like when authors portray the richness and beauty of the desert alongside its potential deadliness.

A woman overwhelmed by her fears, powerlessness and grief finds solace inside a giant cactus in the desert. This dark, funny and surreal novel gave me Saint-Exupéry‘s The Little Prince vibes. If you‘re a fan of stylish existentialist introspection, check this out. I laughed and I cried.

…something looks different about her.
It‘s her lashes that have changed; they‘ve tripled in size. Where yesterday there were two silky half-moons, today are full-on feather dusters. I don‘t know how she can see.

Every Best Western lobby has a few unifying design rules, at least as far as I‘ve observed, and this Best Western is no different:
Where wood can be fake, make it fake.
Where linoleum can be used, use linoleum.
If a geometric shape can be incorporated into any wall, rug, or floor tile, it‘s going in.

Later in the day, when the sun‘s oven begins to close up shop, the rabbits re-emerge from their holes. They are beautiful creatures: all fur, curves and peace.
[internet photo]

This is my first book by Broder and reading it felt like the earth shifting under my feet a bit. She takes you outside the realms of reality just enough to have no idea what will happen next. I loved the main character in the story and her narrative voice was perfect. A fun and unexpected pick. Thanks for the tip @Megabooks !

This is trippy and dryly/darkly funny.

Melissa Broder always writes hilarious messy girl characters in odd situations but I find the writing in this particular book feels really honest- she aptly handles grief in a really honest and accessible way and I‘m already feeling a lot while reading this. 🌵

This book is about a woman mourning her father and possibly her sick husband though both are still alive. It's about a stage of grief family members go through with loved ones that are suffering from terminal illness. Something people deal with all the time. And because this author is definitely extra, she does it in an unexpected way. I love this cover.

#BookSpinBingo @TheAromaofBooks

#aardvark @AardvarkBookClub

#BookSpin #DoubleSpin #BookSpinBingo @TheAromaofBooks

Late to the monthly party as usual.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Death Valley is an engaging existential fever dream that you‘ll want to inhale quickly and then ruminate on for days afterwards. I loved Melissa Broder‘s voice as a writer and as the audiobook narrator. Weird, witty, poetic, poignant. 🎧

“If I could define my terror - of life and dying and loving and all of it - if I could say, This is what it is, I would say: It keeps going. It keeps going and also it will end.”

A woman seeks to escape her depression in the desert.

Fever Dream ✨ Meta ✨ Spiritual

“Think the Chronicles of Narnia, but instead of a wardrobe, it‘s a cactus.”
– Cosmopolitan

#aardvarkbookbox #aardvarkbookclub #deathvalley #melissabroder #litfic #literaryfiction

I liked this #aardvark choice a lot. Broder writes wonderfully complex and compelling female characters and puts them in fantastically f***ed up situations! Just great!

A woman arrives at a Best Western in the California desert to try to finish her book. But she‘s also dealing with a father emerging from a coma and a chronically ill husband. A trek through the desert tests her mentally and physically and maybe gives her some perspective.

Went overboard, but @AardvarkBookClub ‘s picks were FANTASTIC this month!!! If I didn‘t already have Rouge from the library, I would‘ve gotten it instead of Starter Villain. And maybe I should‘ve waited at the library for SV, but that cover is fantastic! 😂😂🫶🏻 Broder is always interesting, and my library doesn‘t get her books. Black Sheep seems like a great seasonal book (horror). Nice job #aardvark!

#Aardvark picks are out. This was a struggle. I basically wanted all of them (except I already read Rouge which is awesome). My finalists were this and Starter Villain. Amazing author choices. I love this book box.

@AardvarkBookClub