Welcome to Litsy!

April‘s #Bookspin list. May the book gods pick a good number!

My March #bookspin and #doublespin

Looking forward to a great month! Thank you so much for hosting, @TheAromaofBooks

Some characters might be too cliche - either good hearted or mean but what a treat this book was: The writing, the characters, peeking into their lives and into what community life in a small farming town in Colorado could be like. Loved it. Looking forward to Evensong.

Someone I met recently said this was their favorite book so I picked it up and read it. The book weaves together a few different stories into one loose story in the end. There were some really beautiful parts and a couple that were confusing for me. I enjoyed it. I‘d be interested to read other books by the same author.

First 5⭐️ of the year goes to this #ALSpine pick! Thanks to @Emilymdxn this finally got read after 8 years on my kindle!

This novel set in a small town on the high plains of Colorado is full of stark, quiet beauty. A man raises two young boys after his chronically ill wife moves to Denver. Two old bachelor brothers take in a teenage girl whose come up unmarried and pregnant. Kind people are treated well here. I‘ll definitely continue the series!

I am quite happy with how things ended up with my #bookspin and #doublespin.

Plainsong, which I have owned since 2015 🫣, is on @Emilymdxn ‘s #ALSpine list, and I started it this morning before the draw. Only a couple of chapters in, but I‘m really enjoying it!

Seven Steeples is a bargain book find that just happened to be on the #toblonglist, so I‘m excited to read it too!

📚 Parable of the Sower*Passing*Passion According to GH*Pastoralia*Pedro Páramo*Plainsong
🖋️Poe*Peter Mendelsund*Orhan Pamuk*Portis*Pratchett
🎬 Pearl*Possessor*Pandora's Box*Pan's Labyrinth*Passion of Joan of Arc*Picnic at Hanging Rock*Psycho*Pi
🎙️ Philip Glass*Portishead*Pharoah Sanders*Patti Smith*Pixies*PJ Harvey*Phoebe Bridgers*Pearl Jam
🎧Porta (Sharon Van Etten)*Pay Your Way In Pain (St Vincent)*Pair of Brown Eyes (Cat Power)👇

#AlphabetGame #letterP

Gentle, quiet, and eloquently told, Plainsong is about ordinary people in a small town facing difficult choices in life. There‘s no plot twist or dramatic plot yet I found the story engaging and beautiful.

Another month of great choices that make it hard to pick a favorite. I decided to go with Plainsong as my monthly and bracket winner, due to its beautiful and simple story, and the high likelihood I‘ll read it again.
I hope July shapes up to be as good as the last two months.

#2022ReadingBracket

There is something about the slow and even build of a Haruf novel that is so satisfying. It isn‘t an action-packed thriller but there still so much going on under the surface. Another beautiful story.

This book is like a gentle breeze on a summer‘s day. It leaves you with a deep seeded contentment that only the most special books can. Offering a window into the soul of small town America, I was mesmerised by the beautiful storytelling from the first page. This is a book that will stay with you long after you have carefully placed it on your bookshelf. To be read again multiple times in the future.

Blue skies, a beautiful book and a long weekend. Book lovers bliss 😍

This beautiful book captures the essence of life and the truth in small-town characters. Heartening; just a delightful group of characters that you will know. If you don‘t, meet them here.

On to this simplistic yet holistic novel.

Quick book journal update on my attempt to scale #mountbr in 2022! I‘m on a quite strict book buying ban for another 45 days and trying to reduce my owned tbr mountain by 100 books in 2022. Here‘s where we are so far!

Reading through books I‘ve bought but failed to read helps me feel like I‘m earning back wasted money which is a nice feeling.

I loved this book so much. It felt like a true great American novel, tender, expansive and managing to do so much without ever feeling pretentious or like it was trying too hard. I loved the simple, spare prose and how rich and subtle the characters were. The two old brothers‘ interactions with the pregnant high school girl made my heart ache. I loved this so much

#sunlightwellness

Re-reading this for book club. Hope I feel more positive to it than I did first time round.

I love everything that Kent Haruf wrote. He writes the most endearing characters. 🤱

What a beautiful novel. Haruf has this way of making you care deeply about his characters; I‘m left imagining how the rest of their lives unfold. It starts out slow but draws you in completely and has a quiet sort of feel to it but with the drama of a small town and it‘s inhabitants. I do love a book set in rural America & would highly recommend this if you do too. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Book, bath and wine 🥰

Our Souls at Night by Haruf is one of my favourite books so I‘m hoping this will be a good one too.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2020/november/speech-mark-fiction-disappearin...

Plainsong doesn't use speech marks. For that reason somebody in my bookclub decided to listen to an audiobook version. But can an audiobook convey that stylistic choice of the author and if not, does it matter?

I found the extreme plainness of the style rather affected for much of this book and it was only when the feud between Tom Guthrie and the Bowmans started to escalate and when Victoria decided to come back to Holt from Denver that I really got interested in the characters and the story. I spent much of the book wondering how the two narrative threads were going to link up, and even at the end I felt they hadn't really.

#sunlightwellness #mycover

My #BookSpinBingo board for August. Let‘s see how we go!

Highly #recommend! Plainsong is a quiet, endearing novel about life in a small town. It follows an oddball cast of characters over the course of a school year. Gotta love the McPheron brothers! Because of them, I am shelving this right next to A Man Called Ove. 💙

I absolutely want to read more by #KentHaruf. Anyone care to recommend which of his books I should read next? Any you particularly love?

I read this book about a million years ago but remembered basically nothing about it. Al of the recent Litsy love convinced me to pick up a copy for a reread and I am so glad that I did. Such a lovely book to get spend a few hours in and I think I appreciated it more at this point in my life.

#currentlyreading

Kent Haruf is one of my new favorite authors. This one also set in Eastern Colorado, about a pregnant girl taken in by two bachelor farmers and two boys abandoned by their mother. Simple and moving. Plainsong is the unisonous vocal music used in the Christian church from the earliest times.

This sparse, quiet book with no quotation marks took me to a small Colorado town where I met a pregnant teen, 2 farmers with hearts of gold and 2 young brothers whose parents are separating. Beautifully written! 5⭐️ book18

Stopped into The Last Bookstore while in LA today! I highly recommend checking this place out if you ever get the chance. Really neat place for used books, records, and local art! I purchased the tagged book.
#thelastbookstore #stacks #usedbooks #losangeles

The characters are so good in this book I want to chat with all of them IRL

This was my #OneWordTitle for #ReadWithMrBook

I was happy to get this off my TBR and really enjoyed the story even if the author didn‘t use quotation marks.

This would work well for a February #Tearjerker as well.

I liked this book. It was sweet. I picked this off my TBR for #ReadWithMrBook one word title, and I‘d like to read more by Kent Haruf. (This would probably work for next month‘s tearjerker prompt too)

No quotation marks 😬

Just finished. 3 stars. Very likeable characters but was a little slow at some points. A good comfortvread.

Thank you so much, Cindy, for such a fabulous gift. 😘 I love the card, and your kind words, the bookmark is beautiful and I love having my own red string! I think I'll add the book to my stack for Christmas, I really want to read it soon. How lucky we are to be able to share books all around the world!

#bookreport
Sorry a day late - too busy yesterday 😁
Didn‘t get to Patsy off last weeks forecast- read Plainsong instead. Currently reading Never Have I Ever. Finished the other three and enjoyed them all.

10 mins to go on train and have finished 😁
What a lovely read, feels like I‘ve lived these characters lives, such beautiful writing
( as a PS for the squeamish I skipped some animal bits!).

Train reading today- not on my planned reads this week but it shouted at me from my kindle this morning 😁

For UK Littens this is on a time limited deal for #99ponkindle.... Saw @cinfhen praising this very recently so snapped it up. Straight to the top of #mounttbr 👍

Mission: I will go and find EVERY book written by this brilliant author and read them all. Picked this up off my shelf on a whim and literally did not put it down for 4 hours. (Ok, i did take a bathroom break twice and made myself a cup of tea...hence 2nd bathroom break) A heartbreaking yet hopeful story set in the small town of Holt, Colorado. Told in short chapters and sparse language, I was transfixed. 5 BIG stars and a box of tissues

This is a quietly beautiful book about several people in a small town in Colorado. I love this kind of fiction that lets you get to know the characters and gives a real feel for the little struggles in their lives.

I‘ve got another by Haruf on my TBR shelf, and now I‘m looking forward to it.

Well, that wraps up all the books I added to my TBR in 2015.
❌ = I just couldn‘t / bailed
✅ = Read it and rated it
There were some really good books on this list. I can‘t believe I waited so long to read them.
Now, onto 2016 ...

Plainsong is one of those unforgettable books. I wasn‘t sure after reading the first few chapters if I really wanted to continue. But something about Kent Haruf‘s writing style reminded me of John Steinbeck (one of my all time favorites). So, I kept reading and up pops the McPheron brothers and I was instantly hooked. Their relationship with Victoria Roubideaux is something that I will never forget. This is a very special book in so many ways.

But, of course! Because I read way past my bedtime. 😝

What would you do?

These were the replenishments for my #AmericanWest-Set Display 😊!

Have you read any of these?!

#LitsyLovesLibraries #MrBooksDisplays

In honor of all the awesome single moms who are parenting solo, I put together a list for @bookriot of 10 novels featuring single mothers. I salute those amazing women!

https://bookriot.com/2019/05/08/novels-about-single-mothers/

#amwriting #mothersday #singlemoms

Loved the character development in this book. You fall in love with the two old farmers!