Welcome to Litsy!

I dragged my feet on picking a NONFICTION winner for #2024ReadingBrackets to move on. For March, the clear winner was the tagged book, a true story about police corruption in Baltimore. I first saw the HBO series about the scandal, produced by David Simon (“The Wire”). Once I heard it was based on a book … I flew through it. It was a great read (and TV show). But I keep thinking about Raskin's book, so I had to move that through.

So far I‘ve been late with every single one of my # #2024ReadingBrackets. #Consistency! 😊 For my March FICTION bracket, I went with a two-fer. Before reading “Tom Lake,” I took @dabbe ‘s advice and read “Our Town.” And I loved them both. You don‘t need to read “Our Town” first—but I believe it adds an even richer, deeper dimension to an enjoyable reading experience.

I decided to mix it up and use a different template for my NONFICTION reads in #2024ReadingBrackets because why not? 🤷🏻‍♀️ February‘s pick was this detailed biography of baseball legend Ted Williams. And I don‘t have to pick between it and January‘s book by Jamie Raskin, which was also great. Winning! 🏆

I made my #2024ReadingBrackets for February and then forgot to post them. Sheesh. 🙄 For FICTION, my pick was “The Marriage Portrait.” O‘Farrell does a masterful job of creating tension throughout a book whose end we already know from the very beginning. That‘s a talent, for sure. But in the matchup I had to lean towards “Wellness” to move on.

My last NONFICTION read of January was also my favorite for #2024ReadingBrackets. Jamie Raskin writes beautifully about his sorrow over the death of his son by suicide and Trump‘s attempted coup against our country —both of which happened within the same week. He tells the story of how these two disparate events collided and merged in his personal and professional life. Highly recommend.

My #2024ReadingBrackets FICTION pick for January was the tagged book. I loved the witty snarkiness of the story about two people who meet as college students in the 1990s and how their lives progress into the present while dealing with the challenges of parenting, marital boredom, mindfulness apps, Facebook algorithms, and relatives brainwashed by fake news. It reminded me of a John Irving novel as the tangled plot strands merged into one.