Welcome to Litsy!

#weeklyforecast

Continue on with The Lark. Loving the little bit I‘ve read so far 🥰

Second Place by Cusk was not my favourite book of last year, but it‘s the one I remember most. Images from that book are fixed in my mind. So I‘m drawn to Cusk and Outline, a present from @squirrelbrain 🙏 . I did read the first chapter this morning and I‘m hooked 👍🏻♥️

Have a good reading week everyone 📚.
Hi Cindy 👋🏻 hoping all is well with you X

I loved learning about the main character through her conversations and interactions with the many characters around her. Beautiful writing and I found myself noting passages throughout the book. I will read more Cusk. And loved finishing it on a deck overlooking the Salmon river in Stanley Idaho. Now on to some hiking and fishing!

A strange little book that I really enjoyed and it‘s very hard to explain why. Apparently it‘s a novel - I felt like it was essays/observations. It starts with a writer flying to Athens to teach a short writing course and each chapter describes conversations with the people she meets. It seems to me to be observation as an art form, the narrator seems to remove herself from the world in order to completely focus on the “other” who is speaking.⬇️

Like, this is the level of outlining I can handle. Plotters, @ me.
It‘s the third outline, updating as I draft, if that helps??

#pantser #amwriting #histfic #process #1stgildedage #a4effort #chitown #nyc #labormovements #populism #settlementhouse #story #arcofhistory

A British woman travels to Athens to teach a writing class. Described here are her interactions with others during that trip and those relationships later, though not in a linear fashion. Oddly, we learn very little about the narrator herself and more about those around her. The writing is terrific, though I haven‘t entirely decided if it worked for me as a novel with its lack of plot. 🤔

#ReadingEurope2020 #Greece

If you like "plotty" novels you'll likely hate this. The MC goes to Athens to teach a writing course but the story itself doesn't "go" anywhere much. She finds herself on the receiving end of several monologues delivered by people she meets. It put me in mind of that drawing exercise that asks you to reveal an object by drawing the negative space rather than focusing on the thing itself. I enjoyed it very much!

Enjoying this book a lot but damn if American book design isn‘t 10-15 years behind. it makes me sad to see good writing get the personality-less airy-but-r e s p e c t a b l e treatment, with that noughties-feeling paper gradient. Topped off with the NYT seal of approval. It‘s so depressingly conformist and lifeless, the type of design that keeps me from getting interested at all. the cover on the right (British cover I think) is so much better.

I reread this, because I‘m about to get into the whole trilogy, and I wanted this one fresh in my mind.

It‘s still really good, but so much bleaker than I remembered, with its view of life in general. Why didn‘t I remember it being this bleak?

(That new cover redesign though!)

I was suddenly filled with the most extraordinary sense of existence as a secret pain, an inner torment it was impossible to share with others, who asked you to attend to them while remaining oblivious to what was inside you

Book review for Outline by Rachel Cusk
Check out the full review here:
http://www.athinsliceofanxiety.com/2019/07/review-outline_90.html?m=1
#athinsliceofanxiety #outline #rachelcusk #creativewriting #read #writing

This book had peaked my curiosity last year, and I had the chance to read it this weekend. The book is a series of ordinary encounters and observations. Not much happens, but much is revealed of humanity, life, and relationships. And I loved the fluidity of Rachel Cusk's writing. Definitely plan to continue with the trilogy!

Starting the first in this trilogy. Happy mid-week, all! 🌷

I haven‘t read a book that felt so vivid and showed a true depiction of humanity in a long time. Outline was simple and beautifully written and is a new favorite! Someone had recommended it to me when I asked whether you‘d read a book that didn‘t contain a relationship—not love but any kind of relationship—but I disagree: This book was full of people telling their stories in an attempt at being understood by each other and themselves. Beautiful!

I won a signed copy of the last book in this series so of course I had to go and buy the first two. (It drives me crazy that the second one is different!!)
The book is pretty much made up of different conversations. Although some parts were interesting, I found my mind wandering. 3 ⭐️ I‘m not rushing to read the other two.

Books read in February 2019.
Five-star reads include House of Impossible Beauties, Outline, Fired Up, My Brother's Husband, and Double Awesome Chinese Food.

Happy Galentine's Day to you, too, @Caroline2 , and thank you! I'm curious about the marmite nature of this one (I've not read her before) and wonder what I will make of it.
How lovely is that card, too? Here's an idea for the wonderful #jbuk Littens: the first person to guess correctly how many of the books depicted I've read wins a prize! Comment below if you want to play. One guess each! 😉
(#jbuk members only, because of postage costs)

I really enjoyed this novel where nothing much happens but much is revealed through the nuance of conversation and connection.

This is a hard one to review....it‘s brilliant, yet kinda boring! Profound and thought provoking yet superficial and irritating. I wanted to bail but I also wanted more. I loved it, I hated it. Maybe I need to sleep on this? 🤔

Ah, I was so seduced by the way Cusk‘s nearly unnamed main character acts as a vessel for her encounters. Though she isn't fleshed out in page space, the way she re-tells the reader what her friends & acquaintances have just told her provided enough of a voyeuristic lens for me to understand & enjoy Faye too. There IS a subtle thread of plot that leads from the first chapter to the last, this could also be read as a collection of short stories.

This novel has no plot. It is nothing more than a series of encounters. A novelist travels to Athens to teach a writing course. She meets various people, some strangers, some friends, and they tell her stories from their lives. Along the way she shares a few telling details of her own. It may sound unpromising, but I found it fascinating.

Has this on my shelf forever, going to take a chance and read it.

October was the month of the epic and/or intense read for me. Although slow, it was full of excellent reads. Outline was definitely the stand out, and a top quality buddy read at that! The new Kingsolver and Zusak‘s were absolute treats. I was a fan of the two polarising Booker shortlisted novels I read. Our #indiebuddyread was perturbing but thought provoking. November is set to be the #readharder catch up month!

Outline is essentially plotless. It‘s not a novel about events, or even particular characters. Even the narrator herself is barely seen, only in the reflection of those she interacts with.

Significantly, Cusk‘s novel, in being about no one, or no thing in particular, is really about all of us. In reading this, we are all outlines, waiting to be filled by the reflections of others, the things that we engage with, which allow us to see ourselves.

That‘s it. Rachel Cusk is a genius.

Unapologetic spam this book is magic. Chapter 8.

Truth

Chapter 6. The observations in this are so astute.

This book!

Too good Cusk!

👌🏻

Astute

Metaphor

Kicking off a much anticipated buddy read with a friend

#backpackEurope travelogue *fictional*
Country 18: Greece is stunning. I loved seeing the Parthenon (LANDMARK) and the Acropolis in Athens (Greek mythology/history is fun!). I also toured the islands of Santorini and Mykonos and ate so much good food (pita and hummus, yogurt and honey and more)!
This book is also stunning. A woman goes to Greece and has conversations. Meditative, philosophical, thoughtful. Like a concise Karl Ove Knausgaard. 5/5

I want to read this but I‘m going to have to get over my resentment of sans serif fonts. Really - Arial? It‘s making me cast judgment before I‘ve read it...

Although this wasn‘t one of my favorite books, I did find many quotes that I felt were very relatable. Not so sure that I‘ll finish the other 2 books in this series.

Cusk's novel in ten conversations, what Maureen Corrigan calls autobiographies in miniature, features an outline of a narrative. Meditations on perception & love (containing the best passages on marriage I've recently read), Cusk calls to mind Ali Smith in the way the domestic & intimate intersect with the cultural & political. The speakers are frequently disillusioned, yet none seem to feel hopeless. Rather they are speaking out of experience.

A quick nap detoured me from from #24in48 progress but I was glad to be refreshed enough to enjoy the stunning writing and philosophical observations in this exceptional novel. Rachel Cusk‘s insight and analysis of human suffering and frailty is spectacular. What a tour de force 5/5 @24in48 this one will be hard to top!

#24in48 hour 6 challenge. Best opening line “before the flight I was invited for lunch at a London club with a billionaire I‘d been promised he had liberal credentials” can‘t wait to start this one! @24in48 #24in48

I‘ve got so many tedious errands to run this weekend that I‘m pretty sure I won‘t be able to hit 24, but I‘ll have fun trying. Here‘s the stack! @24in48 #24in48 I might have to throw a non fiction in there to mix it up, but this is the stack I‘m launching with!

It‘s not the ocean, but I‘ll take it. Gonna attempt to read this first before kudos has to go back to the library. Two books in five days? Sounds like a challenge for this slow reader.

A good read! Will definitely carry on reading the other books in this series. A really intriguing and clever approach by Rachel Cusk.

I cannot decide what why I think of this book. It feels like an emotionless intellectual exercise in which every character describes feelings and never feels anything at all. And yet. And yet. I find it a somehow compelling narrative just the same. In the end because of its brevity I‘m declaring it a pick.

I read this yesterday, and I hardly ever finish a book in one day. This novel is hard to summarize since it's about more than the story's outline. A female author travels to Athen to learn aspiring would-be authors to write. And while she's there she talks with people and the novel centers around these conversations and her thoughts during them. I'll definitely read the next novel in this trilogy.

Day 6 of the #Riotgrams Challenge: duologies, trilogies, & more! Rachel Cusk‘s Outline trilogy is perfection and the final book came out yesterday, so it is complete. Read it and weep, babies. ❤️🕊🎶

I just received the Advanced Reader Copy of the third in this series, so it was time for me to finally pick this up. I have been holding this off for the “perfect” time to read it. I‘m only a few pages in and I love the tone so far.

I loved this so much!!! And, yet, to describe it, it doesn‘t seem like anything I would choose. But, this is fabulous and subtle and so very brilliant. The reader gets snippets of life from students, colleagues and passing strangers of the protagonist. These small stories create the outline of the title. The protagonist is known only in negative space, in her reactions to others. I‘ll be grabbing the second book in this series ASAP! #audiobook

I stumbled across literary-map.com that helps you find authors similar to the one you love ( or want to avoid!) Type in the name as I did for Rachel Cusk and presto!

Nope, can‘t do it. Too much description, not enough story.