Welcome to Litsy!

This was the tightest vote in a while - certainly tighter than my month last year (James/All Fours 😂) - but Woodworking won 25-18. In the end, I'm really pleased we had a month with great discussions about two books a lot of us enjoyed! Thank you all so much for participating and making this a fun month to lead! #CampLitsy25 @barbarabb @squirrelbrain

Audition made the #BookerPrize longlist! Interested to see what other #camplitsy people think of this!

Personally I didn‘t enjoy reading it. But I can see how it‘s a good novel? I just don‘t like being confused! 🤣

#camplitsy25
@squirrelbrain @Megabooks @BarbaraBB

I‘ve been really looking forward to this one and it definitely didn‘t disappoint. Great selection for #CampLitsy25

I loved this so, so much, and am pretty sure it‘s going to end up on my top-ten (or however many titles I allow myself to count as “top”) for the year. Erica, a trans teacher in small-town South Dakota—who‘s not yet out—befriends the only other trans person she knows: one of her students. Told from multiple perspectives, this gave such a rich, complex portrait of trans experience. The characterization and nuance here were phenomenal— ⤵️

I forgot to post last week. I don‘t know how I escaped reading Mandy before now as it remains one of my daughter‘s favorite books. It is delightful and she was so surprised when I told her it was written by Julie Andrew‘s!

I loved Woodworking! So glad it was a #CampLitsy25 selection.

@Read4life

I stayed up late to read this one before it was returned on Libby, and it was worth it. Strategically starting it after my elder kid returned from a trip to Portland was also a good idea. The tension is a little much to bear, and living on the West Coast, the premise is a little too real, but I love the complex relationships, the imperfections, the portrayal of grief and disappointment at how our image of life differs from reality. #camplitsy25

It is that time of the month! #CampLitsy25 readers please vote for your favorite book from July! It seems like many of us liked both books, so I'm curious to see which will come out on top. 🤔 Vote simply by putting the name of the book in your comment.

I hope all of you will be back for August! I think we may need to install AC first, though! (The corn sweat is killing us around here.)

@barbarabb @squirrelbrain

I can tell already I‘m going to love this book.

Thanks #camplitsy25 for suggesting it, it wasn‘t even on my radar.

@squirrelbrain @Megabooks @BarbaraBB

I thought I would end up with very mixed feelings about this book, as often happens to me with Okorafor‘s work. I admired the main character, Zelu, but didn‘t much like her, and her family was infuriating. I enjoyed the interwoven book-within-a-book much more—but the framing made Zelu the focus, so I didn‘t enjoy the book as a whole as much as I wanted to. Until the end. The ending not only surprised me, it absolutely made the book for me. ⤵️