Welcome to Litsy!

Beautiful adaption with Helen Mirren! Streaming on Amazon.

I appreciate the complicated & raw relationship between the two women.

Joanna was an amazing woman and was one of the only women to inherit her kingdom in her own right. She brought as much peace and prosperity as her horrible husbands would allow and her kingdom flourished into a power under her strong rule after her horrible husbands died.
The book gets deep into papel politics as Joanna played a surprisingly big role in the history of the Catholic Church.
3.5/5 fascinating but bogged in church politics

This book was a trip. The narrator is a social worker who mostly works with children (I think). I enjoyed this behind-the-scenes look, the disjointed nature of the narrator‘s thoughts. Social work, work with the public in general, can you leave you feeling jaded and cynical, and maybe even a little deadened to things that should shock you. I look forward to reading more by Konrad. 241/1,001 #1001Books

Hungary in 1929 saw the exposure of over a hundred deaths which were linked to a small group of people in a village called Nagyrev. For over a decade, Auntie Suzie, the local midwife, had helped local women get rid of inconvenient relatives by means of poison. They came to be known as The Angel Makers.

Given the source material this should have been an interesting read, but it turned out to be a chore to get through.

“Because Paul Erdos was a genus-and he shared his brain. He helped people with their math problems and gave them more problems to do. Plus, he was a math matchmaker.
He introduced mathematicians all over the world to one another so they could work together”

I love how this book engages readers through the intricate storytelling and vivid illustrations. The author really makes this story an enjoyable and informative read for anyone curious about the life of a mathematical genius.

This book is a biography that dives into the extraordinary life of the renowned mathematician Paul Erdos. The book captures Erdos's passion for numbers and the unique way he approached math. This book does a great job of exploring his brilliant mind and his unconventional, nomadic lifestyle in the world of math.

Finally finished! Started this months ago. Kept setting it aside. The story is really fascinating (the postscript about a crime in 1986 London, Ontario and how it relates to these poisonings in Hungary decades earlier is unbelievable!) and McCracken clearly did a ton of research. I appreciated learning about life in a 1920s Hungarian village, but I think it was perhaps overly detailed. The story (which really is astonishing) got bogged down a bit.