#GuiltyPleasure #TitlesandTunes
It seems right to start this post with a confession: I don't have guilty pleasure reads. I read mostly literary fiction and have noticed what people call guilty pleasures are mostly romance or thrillers. My explanation for that is bad versions of those genres can still be fun, but exactly 0 people want a bad LF novel. So I found one thriller on my shelf - actually well-reviewed but check out the tagline 🦴🤐

Why is LoTF a great novel? Many will point to the symbolic aspects - how the tensions that emerge from the society of the boys mirror the wider world's lusts for power and violence. But for me, that's all icing, and the novel's true appeal is in how it handles the drama among its three leads. Their boyhood felt authentic to me - as they attempt leadership, they also battle fear and indecisiveness, and the suspense builds to unnerving levels.

#IslandVibe #Titlesandtunes
I was never assigned Lord of the Flies in school, but it's been a long-time resident on my shelf and one I'd been interested in trying. So this month's prompt is a great excuse, and I'm really enjoying it so far. I just finished the scene where they're feasting on pig meat, so I thought Jimmy Buffett's 'Cheeseburger in Paradise' might be a fitting song pairing (even if a hotdog theme would be even closer 🌭 🏝).

What a Shakespearean opening: in 19th century Italy on the cusp of a regime change, a Sicilian nobleman with fading influence sides with his favored nephew over his loyalist son. And the tragic action that unfolds? His nephew gets married and...that's about it. I'm being a little unfair, but the writing, which offers imaginative descriptions and an endearing, satirical humor also isn't quite interesting enough to compensate for the lack of a plot.

A favorite author of mine, Martin Amis, passed away yesterday. I think he wrote the best novels with unlikable protagonists. It's kind of a lost art today, but what's great about Amis' novels is they're neither tales of condemnation nor winking approval of bad behavior. And definitely not redemption. But you get great insights into the characters, as unsavory as they may be, and all with a biting dark humor narrating their actions.

The title refers to the author's grandfather who was a curandero, a type of healer in the Colombian mountainside town where he lived. This memoir details that family history and the incredible tales of her grandfather's and mother's apparent supernatural abilities and their connection to Colombian culture. Those stories seap into present-day and affect the author's life in surprising ways. I'm confident this one will stay with me for a long time.

Just read this passage while on the train headed to work 😆

In just 87 pages, we glimpse a world inside a single house where 'the naked ones', a society of hermaphroditic individuals, live completely cut off from the larger world outside, their only contacts being 'the clothed ones' who visit, have parties, and torment the naked ones for their own amusement. Weird? Yes. But it's a great example of how fantasy can provide insights into the nature of oppression without relying on some simplistic allegory.

Gioconda Belli was recently stripped of her Nicaraguan citizenship along with 93 others. I don't think it was president Ortega's intention to remind me that this novel of hers was on my TBR, but it did, and now hopefully you can add it to yours and we can increase the readership of authors who resist their fascist governments. The novel is about Adam and Eve: Belli has fun showing us what a world without history looks like from their vantage.

Absorbing novel that looks at five stories of relatives from the same family grappling with a curse that manifests in the form of mental illness. The first is from 1750 and steeped in Ugandan folklore, but the other four set in modern times show different ways the characters interpret their shared history as influencing their present challenges. Makumbi is skilled in examining how personal, political, and family histories speak to each other.

I never heard of this novella or author, but when I picked it up in the bookstore, these opening sentences hooked me. I bought it without knowing anything else about it and am enjoying the strange and creepy interior fantasy world. I will have to check out more by Evelio Roselio and New Directions publishing. Also thinking I should choose more books based on reading the first page 🤔

That DKK is set in the 1960s isn't the only source of its nostalgia. Its style is also more like an older novel: colorful characters, dialogue with rhythm, and a plot that involves criminals dueling over territory, cops just trying to keep up, hidden treasure, and even some romance. But none of that concerns the novel's title character, who prefers to be called Sportcoat even though his alcoholic nickname dominates his image in the neighborhood 👇

#IndependentWomen
I didn't get to read the book this time, but how could I not pop in to join in the playlist-making fun?
This one has many favorite artists of mine, but it's mostly songs I've liked on Spotify in the past year. So there's a mix of recent releases and old favorites. Looking forward to checking out everyone's lists!
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2O8We4i0ILmukrRTWSsGF0?si=jjKKmxEjR6Ofv6unBDRF...

Question for you all: teeth sucking... have you witnessed it? I see it in books all the time and understand it's an expression of anger, but have never seen it used that way in real life. I've only seen it when someone reacts to hearing about a painful injury. I got a partial answer from Google: a blog post says it is an expression of annoyance in West Africa (this novel takes place in East Africa so probably close enough). But......👇

Late #AuldLangSpine review here: this is an incredible story of Harris' struggle to advocate for her son's medical health and educational rights due to a mysterious undiagnosable medical condition. Harris shares intriguing reflections on her experiences: how she responds given her own anxiety issues, why her son's condition also contributes to what makes him special, and other responses to maddening ambiguity. Emotional, yet sharply written.

#AuldLangSpine
Thanks @ncsufoxes for your list this month: I finished three and am still working on This Boy We Made but enjoying it very much. I think I'm going to keep referring back to the list this year and pick up a couple more. Nice chatting with you as well!

@monalyisha thanks for organizing this event! I really like this method of getting recommendations. Looking forward to participating again in the future 😀

#AuldLangSpine @ncsufoxes @monalyisha
The Devil has entered the town of Breathed, Ohio in the form of a 13-year-old boy. Or wait...has he? This tale of the events of a 1984 summer is relayed by the now elderly protagonist as if it were a fairy tale, full of ambiguity. At its core, it's a story of a child discovering the world to be less magical than he thought, full of hate and death. Beautiful language and imagery keep it from being depressing.

#AuldLangSpine @ncsufoxes @monalyisha
I went in knowing very little about deaf society and culture, and this story that follows two deaf students and the hearing headmistress of their private school was a great primer on the societal intolerances deaf people face, especially with the use of ASL. At the same time, I think the author spent a little too much time educating newbies like me - I learned a lot but also wanted more from the characters.

#AuldLangSpine #MLKday
At first I assumed (wrongly) that Clint Smith was a journalist: as he travels to different sites with a link to slavery in the U.S., he asks questions of other visitors and tour guides to hear their views on what the sites (including plantations, museums, a prison, graveyard) reveal about the legacy of slavery. His skill at posing the questions is clear: he neither shys away from creating discomfort nor courts it.👇

I'm not a #botm member but my sister got me a gift certificate, so I picked this bunch from past months. True Biz is one of my #AuldLangSpine picks, so I'll be trying that one pretty soon. Most of my shelves are paperbacks, so it's strange to pick up three hardcovers all of a sudden 📚
I'm looking forward to these - lots of buzz about two of them, but The Verifiers also sounded intriguing.
@ncsufoxes @monalyisha

Look, I appreciate the vote of confidence, Goodreads, but let it go already, IT'S NOT HAPPENING! 😑

Here's to a new year and opportunity for meeting our reading goals (or just being content with wherever we land). Happy New Year everyone! 🥳🎉

This is my first time trying the #jolabokaflod tradition. This is the first book up, and it opens with a knife-wielding maniac chasing a toddler after having just murdered his whole family 😨 Not very festive, but enough action to keep me awake, with the help of some gingerbread sandwich treats.

I love thinking about what made this novel such a runaway hit. You can enjoy the world of the novel or the philosophical questions it poses. Although I did enjoy thinking up theories, the world drew me in more than anything. It's got so little in it - two people, statues, large rooms, water, birds, fish, a couple skeletons - and that is somehow enough in combination with Clark's storytelling to make for a completely immersive reading experience.

Even if you're like me and love Jacqueline Woodson's writing, this slim novel from 1995 with a mere 149 ratings on Goodreads is easy to scroll past. But it's no less perfect than her more popular ones: she packs so much into a sentence. One example: in the title story, the narrator looks at an old family photograph and imagines words her sister will say as an adult "are there already, festering inside my sister's brain, waiting to explode."?

#AboutMe #AuldLangSpine
Here's a few things about me:
-I live with my fiancee of 7 years (yep, that's years not months 😄) in NJ.
-We've got two amazing 1-yr-old brother cats - Jem (middle right) and Scout (bottom right).
-The kids are my nephew and niece (ages 3 & 5).
-My partner and I love going to concerts & museums.
-Music is my favorite hobby next to reading - I love indie rock and hip hop most.
-Have gotten into birding in recent years 🐦‍⬛

#AuldLangSpine
Very excited to decide how to start off my 2023 reading year based on this excellent list courtesy of @ncsufoxes I might start with the ones pictured, though there are several fiction and nonfiction choices that appeal to me, so this could change. I didn't have the best reading luck in 2022 so I'm hoping these recommendations will get 2023 started off right.
Thanks @monalyisha for arranging this event once again!

#nyrbbookclub members I'm struggling with my first NYRB selection since the monthly picks. I like a challenge every now and then, but to give you an idea of what this one is like, this single sentence (which is too long to fit in its entirety) contains the phrases: "post-traumatic cicatrization", "passionate peroration", and "an extracting maieutics" ?‍? I'm torn about continuing - not exactly the murder mystery I was hoping for!

My Halloween read this year was a good one: a very spooky tale involving a vengeful elk spirit. While many horror tales co-opt Native American culture as almost an afterthought, having characters who are part of the same culture makes the novel richer and more interesting. I also enjoyed Graham Jones' dialogue - so good you forget you're reading and not watching a movie. I did have a tough time visualizing some of the lengthy action sequences. 👇

Each essay in this collection focuses on a famous animal, spanning from prehistoric times to present day. An essay collection on animals sounds like a light read, but this was easily my most challenging of the year. One reason is that the essays aren't 'about' the animals as much as the animals within the historical contexts they appear, and the entire spectrum of human responses that occur, from reverence to exploitation to downright cruelty 👇

#Fearfulfall #Happyhorror
I'm sorry I won't be joining the group read this time, but how could I not post a creepy playlist? I took some favorites from past Halloween playlists and added some new discoveries. I tried organizing by genre: classical, film scores, rock, hip hop, and electronic.
Happy Halloween all 🎃!
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0eVxzG07soO0ejYFlnMxOb?si=7ZCg1r2nTEycftP5Ff1f...
@Cinfhen @BarbaraBB

Take a standard Twilight Zone episode plot, give it an artistic makeover, and you have Subdivision. Things begin in dreamy fashion where a woman whose personal history is never mentioned rents a room from Clara and 'the Judge' (both retired judges named Clara in fact) who are hospitable and advise her on finding work and permanent housing in this unnamed 'Subdivision'. Yet they are also oddly intent on her assembling a mysterious jigsaw puzzle 👇

I really enjoyed the unique structure and concept - 618 short passages, some authored by Shields, while others are quotations, bits of interviews or other materials to fit each chapter's theme. Those themes also cover interesting intellectual topics on the fraught border between fiction versus nonfiction. But I kept hearing this implication that traditional fiction is tired and some new experimental fictive nonfiction is superior somehow 👇

Interesting structure where each story is about the main character Yolanda Garcia (Yo) as seen through the eyes of someone in her life. The first one is told from her mom about Yo as a child and they follow her forward into her life as a writer in adulthood. We meet a diverse array of voices throughout, but Yo's character shines in her eagerness to influence the lives of those around her, even while being thwarted by indecision in her own life 👇

#bookhaul
Some acquisitions from a first-time visit to Frenchtown Bookshop in New Jersey (formerly The Book Garden). Small shop with lots of interesting selections, and an NYRB bookshelf to top it off.
Not related to these three choices, but I'm always intrigued when I see an author who I haven't heard of with multiple novels in a tiny shop - there must have been six or seven from Rachel Cusk. Is anyone a fan of hers?

Saunders presents seven short stories from Russian authors and follows each with an essay that analyzes the story and discusses why stories work in general - what keeps us reading and why a good story ends where it does. I recommend the audiobook - each story has a different celebrity narrator, but I like Saunders' own narration of the essays best. They already have the right mix of scholar and superfan, and his own voice lends a personal touch.

Hi! My name is Nao, and I am a time being. Do you know what a time being is? Well, if you give me a moment, I will tell you.
Reading those opening lines in the book store, I imagined they were spoken by a cheerful alien rather than a suicidal teenager. But their immediacy struck me, and Nao's narrative has an urgency that compels us, just as it does for the fictional Ruth Ozeki who reads it. Magical in spite of large helpings of death and misery.

Had I never listened to Elena Passarello's podcast, I might have assumed this was just coincidental and not a Duran Duran reference dropped without comment into an otherwise entirely straight-faced essay. But knowing a little about the author's personality, this was 100% intentional. I've only just started the second essay and I'm hooked. I also recommend the podcast which is about the literary essay - linked in the comments.

Final NYRB Bonus Question!
We've read so many great novels during this book club - do you have a favorite? Or a top 3-5?

Q6: At the end of the novel, Clarence is depressed at being deceived about his role in Aziana and is reluctant to face the king (let alone put on clothes). Was his final meeting with the king what you were expecting? How did you interpret this encounter?

Q5: Clarence makes many references to odors that make him sleepy, first “the crowd‘s herd-like odor” and later in the forest “the terrible odor of flowers and decay.” When he further considers the forest‘s odor, he thinks, “it is not just an odor of decaying vegetation; it is subtlety itself, a seductive perfume, or rather the seductive mingling of a thousand perfumes […] all of them far too heady, disturbing, caressing, […] far too delectable.”

Q4: There is lots of dialogue concerning the difference between ‘favors‘ versus ‘rights‘. At one point, when Clarence asks why the beggar couldn‘t ask the judge to pardon him, he responds, “Can‘t you get it into your thick head that one cannot beg the favor of receiving something that is one‘s ‘right‘?” What is the novel‘s philosophy on justice when it comes to ‘favors‘ versus ‘rights.‘?

Q3: Clarence is constantly confusing one thing for another—faces look the same, a corridor in Aziana looks like one from the legal offices in Adramé, he believes the path the beggar leads them through the forest is going in circles. Why is Clarence perpetually confused?

Q2: Right from the novel‘s opening, Clarence has a belief in white supremacy that guides his actions and observations. How would you describe his journey throughout the novel when it comes to racism? What factors lead to his change?

Q1: In the Introduction, Toni Morrison notes that for previous novels by Western authors, “Africa was simultaneously innocent and corrupting, savage and pure, irrational and wise. It was raw matter […] to examine desire and improve character. But what Africa never was, was its own subject.” How does Laye use previous stereotypes about Africa to craft a novel about Africa itself?

Nothing more or less than a simple summary of the research and what we can expect under different scenarios. Could it have used another editing pass to get rid of some repetition? Sure. Does he spend a weird amount of time dismissing hydrogen fuel cell electric videos? Yeah, a bit. But it was refreshingly straightforward. I'm not sure I left feeling 'hopeful' exactly but informed and not as depressed as with most
#climatechange education.

#SummerHeat
I'm (once again) behind on my reading and posts so I'm on page 76 of the novel and have no steamy playlist created. So I'm going to cheat and recommend an artist called Stas THEE Boss (Stasia Irons). She is formerly one half of the Seattle-based duo THEESatisfaction and is an exceptional beat maker who really deserves a much wider audience. Her lyrical content is diverse, but when she does a steamier track, trust me, it is 🔥 🔥🔥

My favorite book I read last year that I never posted a review on and my new favorite poetry collection. I've still read so little poetry, and barely any complete collections, but this one has a perfect combination of potent imagery and a mix of ideas that run the gamut from satirical to bleak to comic. I discovered this author during a #ReadingEnvy readalong last year and Jenny recommended I read more of Natalie Diaz's work - very glad I did!

#nyrbbookclub
There's a certain kind of novel about a female heroine with mental health issues who sees the world differently and at first BBwP fits nearly into that literary box. When the novel opens with Shirley decoding messages from her spy lover, it seemed like par for the course. Yet, as it went on I started to question that assumption, almost like the opposite of a novel where you find at the end that a character hallucinated everything 👇

For anyone who was a fan of the #ReadingEnvy podcast and hasn't already heard, I'm sorry to report that Jenny Colvin recently passed away unexpectedly. If you knew her and listened to her show, then you already know how amazing of a human being Jenny was: there is a memorial wall on Goodreads that I have linked in the comments if you'd like to share your memories. If you haven't yet, I'd strongly recommend you try her show, also linked below:

#nyrbbookclub
I'm really enjoying this one so far! I'm not quite halfway through, but there's a scene involving this Bonnard painting in the Toronto gallery the main character visits that is pretty surreal and, without preempting our eventual discussion where we can dig into its meaning, I'm wondering if those who've read it can confirm if my reading of the basic 'what's happening' level is the same as yours. I'll summarize in the comments...