I'd forgotten how visceral the Greek tragedies can be, especially the ones written by Sophocles. Ajax plunges you right into the horrors of death & grief, but also madness as how the ancient Greeks saw it: as determined by the gods. I read the version translated by John Moore, & the way in which Athena ruins Ajax's clarity of mind & vision because of his prior hubris (refusing her help during a war) was pretty chilling & devastating.

It's ironic that the cover blurb states that Elizabeth Eliot is a humorist of the first order, because I found this strange, compelling, & dark. It's my first time reading her & it's peppered with dry British wit, but the framing of the story & the way it casts an eye back reminded me at times of Willa Cather. There's an elusive mystery at the heart of the story about the relationship between Cecil & his mother that raises uncomfortable questions.

Chapter 7: I'd forgotten this bit about Nelly Dean being our (unreliable?) narrator and also being someone who loves reading ... Coinciding a bit too neatly with my other book Don Quixote that has as its protagonist someone gone a bit bananas from too much reading...

Are these writers trying to tell us something 📚💀📚

#WanderingThroughWutheringHeights #pemberlittens @Crinoline_Laphroaig

Received surprise #bookmail ❤️ So delighted! A book that I really wanted (and almost bought in December!) My spidey sense tells me that this might be from you @LeahBergen ? 🙂

Thank you for the tag @ravenlee and sorry I'm a day late 🙂

1) My sort of tentative goals are to read more of the classics I've had on my TBR for a very long time, & to read more nonfiction. History, philosophy, etc. ALL OF THE BOOKS! Sorry, I mean tentative but realistic goals 😆

2) Patience (an eternal life lesson)

3) Reading this slowly & enjoying the humour & thinking underlying the wild misadventures.

#ThoughtfulThursday @MoonWitch94

I might have bitten off more than I can chew to start off 2022, but on top of Don Quixote, #FurrowedMiddlebrowClub, #ShakespeareReadAlong, #WanderingThroughWutheringHeights, & #NYRBBookClub, I thought why not add a Greek play? I got the idea from here: shorturl.at/aoCHJ

January starts off with The Persians; it is haunting & full of ghosts & mourning. It's my first time reading it & it is very fitting for our troubled times of grief & confusion.

😂

At the start, I thought this novel with its elliptical, poetic writing would rub me the wrong way. But it was not easy to pigeonhole this book or guess where it would take you; it was constantly shape-shifting in telling the tale of a Dutch family in Indonesia's Spice Islands & the murders & betrayals, plus the characters & ghosts that slip in & out. Underlying it, the most persistent haunting of all: that of colonialism. It was sad & mysterious.

This has started well 😅

I'm somewhat bereft that this volume was over so soon. Charlie Brown and gang make philosophising hecking adorable. I read a little bit every night before bed and I'm sad to say goodbye. I'm thinking if I just make sure to read a bit of Peanuts and a poem everyday I'll be much happier 🙂

Did a switch for my final #cloakanddaggerchristmas prompt & went with this for the Golden Age mystery. It's a bit of a Bright Young Things escapade, though published in 1935, with a lot of zinging wit & repartee, murders, & romance. I enjoyed it though it's by no means perfect.

I really enjoyed this challenge; murders are perfect for December! Lol. Completed 6 prompts:
Inspector Bucket
Gamache
Tommy & Tuppence
Agatha Raisin
Hercule Poirot
Columbo

Everyone here was right—this movie is a gem. *This* is the pinnacle of noir & screwball comedy & perfect for the holidays since it begins on Christmas Eve & ends on NYE. Shockingly the book that it's based on pales in comparison #themoviewasbetter

William Powell & Myrna Loy are delightful, but a special shoutout to the dog that plays Asta 😆

Thank you so much @Smarkies for this beautiful #jolabokaflodswap package 😘 Everything is perfect and I'm so glad to get a book that's been on my TBR for so long! The book sleeve is gorgeous 💜

Merry Christmas and I hope you have a fabulous holiday.

And thank you @MaleficentBookDragon once again for organising. Merry Christmas! 🎄

Pericles is a wild ride; one will be tossed back & forth by the waves & will emerge from it invigorated, dazed, or slightly ill. Maybe all three? Lol. This play has a combination of bad writing for the first couple of acts (attributed to another writer) & the fantastical elements of fairytale & myth. I didn't enjoy it all the way through but there are bits that stick in my mind, like Marina, her way with words, & her triumph (related to chastity).

I expected this to be the pinnacle of noir slash screwball comedy based on all the raves, but it was largely ... fine? I read it for #cloakanddaggerchristmas for the Tommy & Tuppence prompt, for a mystery featuring a great team. This was more about Nick, a former private detective, doing the detecting, & Nora, his wife, pouring out drinks & getting hit across the face when a gun was pointed at her to prevent a "feminine brainstorm" i.e. hysteria.

Not sure if you guys can relate...

Not me, of course, I'm in total control of my TBR; my TBR is not in control of me 🤣

(stolen from Twitter)

Thanks for the tag @BarbaraBB @youneverarrived this is my #Top21of21

To make it easier to whittle down my faves, I left out my rereads of Austen and Shakespeare. It was a very good reading year again, enriched by the many group reads here on Litsy.

I know lots of people have been tagged already; do you want to give it a go @Bookwomble @nathandrake1997 @Smarkies @mklong @sprainedbrain @BiblioLitten @AnneCecilie @Graywacke @Lcsmcat @charl08 🙂

This one hits hard 💔😔

Rest in power, bell hooks

Lovely #bookmail today and I'm pretty sure this is from you @Cathythoughts ! Thank you so much, sweet friend 😘 My first Cusk and I'm really looking forward to it ❤️

This Golden Age mystery was originally serialised in the papers; a mystery so baffling that even Agatha Christie couldn't solve it. Well, neither could I 😂 This was a jolly good lark—witty dialogue, hijinks, winter in a country house with a bunch of characters thrown together, an amateur sleuth, an intimidating lady of the house, séances gone wrong, hidden passageways, romance, & even shenanigans in the world of finance. Fluffy but satisfying.

Thank you @Cathythoughts for your sweet card 😘 Wishing you and your family a lovely Christmas! 💕

This 1940s mystery was grimmer than I expected & revealed the dark underbelly of the stereotypically languid, traditional English village. Unfortunately, it's a book that came off mean-spirited. The attempts at wit left me cold; the characterisation somewhat rudimentary & elitist. Two things in particular annoyed me:
1) Inspector Littlejohn is as dull as dishwater
2) The insistence on representing working class speech via patronising dialect text

Saw this charming Faber edition of Agnes Grey while browsing today. Perfect to foist upon an unsuspecting young reader and gently convert them to Brontëism 💖

Thank you, Jessie for the beautiful card, the yummy chocolate, and the cheeky button badge (it says "Let's talk about texts" ?)

I hope you have a lovely Christmas and festive period with your family, friend ?? @erzascarletbookgasm

This book is BANANAS & I'm not ashamed to say that I was riveted. How you get along with it will depend on your tolerance for all of the bourgeois Victorian anxieties that come alive in these sensation novels; in this case, we have the usual fears & prejudices about "otherness" in relation to bodies, disability, & also ideal womanhood. The protagonist being an intelligent, independent woman is welcome; the embedded notions of femininity, less so!

This book felt old-fashioned in the best possible way, like the pinnacle of a realist novel. The depth of characterisation & the assured pull of the narrative voice make it hard to put down, & it feels a very wise novel in how it charts a young boy's coming of age in a both a turbulent political & social landscape. I love how Manning depicts extremely flawed characters & no simple resolutions with regards to life's hardships. Riveting & moving.

Mailed my #jolabokaflodswap today and I received mine yesterday from @Smarkies ! Thank you 🙂

@MaleficentBookDragon

I'm the slowest poke that ever poked for this group read but it felt like the book set the pace for me & I had to follow! I first read this as an undergrad in Winnipeg & appreciated it a lot, but reading it now made me understand just how ambitious & wide-ranging it is on the subjects of motherhood, writing, sexuality, & how narratives are constructed both for the individual & a society. Thanks #manawakans for this Laurence deep dive. I loved it.

I think this is my #CloakAndDaggerChristmas list! I'm a slow reader so this is rather ambitious 😅

Golden Age+amateur sleuth: Kitchin or Berkeley (or ideally both if I am attempt to be good & not cheat & combine prompts 🧐)
Translated/set in a different country: Bandyopadhyay, Indian/Bengali
Team/duo: Hammett
Victorian: Collins
Village: Bellairs
Mystery TV show: My current fave, Rosemary & Thyme (British mystery series)

@merelybookish

All of the stars for Snoopy, our esteemed comrade (puprade?) 🌟

The title made me think this was Snoopy living it up, but I should known it was ironic; it's Snoopy, after all! Alternative title: My Year of Rest and Relaxation.

I've never read this before & didn't know much about this legend; it only sprang to life for me when I saw the trailer for The Green Knight. This retelling by Morpurgo for children is beautifully-written & illustrated (art by Michael Foreman). I read a bit each night before bed & it created a suitably magical dreamscape as I drifted off. What I didn't expect was that it's a bit racy for the kids! Lol 👵🏽#ChildrensClassicRead2021 @TheBookHippie

Continuing on my quest to gently wade into some general readings on philosophy before going for the hard-hitting texts at some point (hopefully within the decade ?). The premise for this is that key philosophical concepts are explained in bite-sized nuggets in 30 seconds, but this was way too vague & the style of writing was aggravating. The "metaphorical image" accompanying each concept have captions that are basically just extreme Dad Jokes.

Can't resist a novel about literary fraud & its ensuing shenanigans. In this one, Quentin, a bookseller & writer (variously described by fellow #furrowedmiddlebrowclub readers as a dweeb, a manipulator, & not a peach) attempts to "find" Byron's lost memoirs by forging it. He's not prepared for the clever curiosity of his model girlfriend, however! I enjoyed this & it was smartly set up, but found Quentin sadly somewhat dull in his nefariousness.

I've been meaning to read a lot more philosophy, + a lot more nonfiction in general, but after reading Spillover at the start of the pandemic last year the muchness of life became too much & I retreated to fiction. Though not all of the fictional books I've picked have been consoling 😂 Anyway, this was a great overview of key philosophical thoughts & systems laid out in a comprehensive & engaging manner. Very thinky & conducive to contemplation.

What's not to love about a lighthouse story? There's always something inherently creepy, alienating, & unsettling about the conditions of life in a lighthouse. In this one, three lighthouse keepers disappear in 1972; they are never found. A writer emerges in 1992 to interview the former wives/partners of these men. The situation is mysterious & eerie; the fragmented narrative reveals secrets, heartaches, & pain—as well as the uncanny.

This is like a dark fable, a self-contained nightmare of decay, disease, doom, & death. There's an undercurrent of witchy energy & a sly, winking humour that makes it worthwhile, despite it being a tough read because it's very grim. This is my first book by Comyns, & it's like if Flannery O'Connor & Angela Carter had a baby. The Virago edition has an intro by the author that made me love her instantly; the same energy infuses the narrative voice.

Plague, romance, puns about sex, family feuds, honour, fate, death: all the good stuff of comedy *and* tragedy. This is another one of those plays where I remembered it being about one thing when I read it decades ago (and not being so impressed by it) and finding myself utterly surprised by it this time. Juliet remains an outstanding character, though Mercutio, Tybalt, Nurse, and Friar Lawrence all emerge as fascinating supporting characters.

This book did subtle menace & creepy in all the ways that hit right. Families, burdens, responsibilities, class difference, property, & what Karl Marx said: "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living". I took as long as I did to read this because while the book is very good, it's also deeply unnerving & uncomfortable in how it brings to light the aspects of human nature that transcend the empirical.

I'm about a 100 pages in and there's already been a pretty unnerving scene that kind of hits you out of nowhere. There's a bit of that subtle menace underlying everything but it still made me feel 😰

Sarah Waters knows how to set a scene...

Probably should have bailed. But for reasons unknown to myself, I persisted. Maybe I hoped that the set-up, setting, & atmosphere would pay off. Snowed in, locked room-type concept in a stark minimalist hotel in the Swiss Alps? Good stuff, right? No. Nothing worse than contemporary thrillers where the formula is: hackneyed writing + unconvincing plotting + "big reveal" involving Serious Social Issue treated in the most asinine manner imaginable.

Part of a series of graphic novels commissioned by the Louvre, this manga tells the tale of a Japanese artist visiting Paris who enters the feverish dream-space where art & his unconscious mind meet. The episodic nature of the book highlights individual artists displayed in the Louvre, & the chapters cover the Japanese links to Camille Corot & Van Gogh, for example, while another deals with the transportation+preservation of artwork ahead of WWII.

For several years now I've meant to join in for #Victober (which started out on booktube). This year I managed to squeeze in the group read and enjoyed it! These are stories of dread, menace, and the quotidian terror of patriarchy. As a collection of stories, some are simply better than others. Yet I think anyone who's read Gaskell before and knows of the ways in which she can pull a reader in will find lots to think about and take pleasure in.

This book is a series of interconnected stories told from the POV of an adult looking back at her childhood. The way these quiet stories unfurled reminded me a bit of Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Women or Joan Chase's During the Reign of the Queen of Persia. I missed the wit, anger, idiosyncrasy & uncompromising vision that characterised the protagonists in A Jest of God and the Fire Dwellers, but these stories exerted a subtle, tender power.

For my #nyrbbookclub buddies (great inaugural pick hosted by @BarbaraBB @vivastory ) and fellow Cassandra aficionados! I'm not much of a podcast person but Backlisted is one of the few I keep turning to. I'm looking forward to this episode.

My first time reading this! Fun, with some unexpected humour that genuinely made me chuckle. It's a book of its time in terms of how it presents its good fairy women vs bad witchy women and I wanted some justice for the class of witches in general 😆 I was also a bit stressed out by how cruel the witch mum was 😩 *All of that* aside, this was mostly enjoyable 🙃🧚🏼‍♀️ Thanks for putting it on my radar @TheBookHippie #ChildrensClassicRead2021

This is the second book in the Will Darling Adventures and all I can do is squee. These books so far tick all of fun and pleasure and page-turner boxes, and I'm WHOLLY invested in Will and Kim. The first book set the pace with the intrigue and the physical desire, and the second book ups the emotional stakes with more intrigue and desire that's turning into something more than lust. The dynamic between the two lovers is my favourite bit. 😍

I'm continuing with the Sandman comics, but I might have to take it slowly because I'd honestly forgotten how grim and gruesome it can be. For some reason I remember it as being dreamy and speculative, but there's a lot of elements of crime, noir and pulp fiction cleverly incorporated into the comics. This volume brings us close to some of the worst of humanity; though, at the same time, Gaiman never loses sense of how people become fucked up.

I got into Gaiman's Neverwhere & Sandman comics in a big way when I was in college. There was something dark, subversive, mysterious & enigmatic about the worlds he created, but I was nervous about revisiting it & whether I'd feel the same. While some of the writing & plotting seems a bit derivative now, I still enjoyed the weird & twisted journey of the 1st volume. It was also more violent than I remembered! Look forward to re-reading the rest.

I was on board with this on a purely aesthetic level—the gallows humour, the carnivalesque absurdism, & the utterly irreverent tone of a dystopic future in a place that used to be Moscow, with humanity resembling some of the creatures that one imagines might have been lurking in the primordial soup. I think that a better knowledge of Russian history & culture would have enabled me to "get" this book in a way that would have made the satire click.

There are caveats reading Shakespeare, or any piece of literature from another historical epoch: the values & worldview are obviously going to be removed from those of the present. That said, despite this being a play constructed from the ethics of the Gospels or medieval mores or a combination of both, something that hinges upon the sexual humiliation of women that culminates in a "happy ending" is always already a problem & a tragedy in my eyes.