Thank you for putting this book on my radar @Cinfhen I read it in one day and it was so astoundingly perfect.
I have a friend going through this, it‘s the last days now and I‘ve had my final visit with her (didn‘t know it was the final visit at the time😢) Time for the family to gather around her. I really needed to think about it and have a cry and so on and I‘d just had this book turn up at the library. It was messy and real and perfect. ⬇️

@Reggie thank you so much my friend! 💕 Got a lovely surprise when this arrived in the mail. I have had this on my TBR since @merelybookish posted about how good it was. And it‘s a thing if beauty too! Thank you so much!

Read this on a whim - found it in a “most anticipated” list It‘s structured like Cloud Atlas, in that we have multiple timelines, Shai, Evelyn, Johann and Linnaeus, and we get half of each of the first 3 protagonist‘s stories, a bit from Linnaeus & then the second half of each of the 3 stories. They‘re tied together by a love of botany, a desire to escape and explore. Lariat writes beautifully & is influenced by Robin Wall Kimmerer ⬇️

So - bear with me while I explain. I‘m going to reread Murderbot because rereading is my #guiltypleasure (I don‘t really feel guilty but I know it‘s not reducing my TBR!)
Also Murderbot is a character with a guilty pleasure. Yes he‘s hacked his mind control but does he use his freedom to overpower his human masters? - no he uses it to watch 35000 hours of movies and soap operas. I get you Murderbot. And for my song, well you probably don‘t know⬇️

Really enjoyed this series (on Apple TV here in NZ). The setting of London and Essex in Victorian era was beautifully portrayed and Claire Danes was fantastic. (Also quite happy to look at Tom for hours 😂) It‘s been a few years since I read the book but the plot was as I remembered. The stand out for me was Frank Dillane as Luke Garrett - god he made every scene he was in so interesting! Must look out for him in future.

Home with a cold and I just flew through this book. Tippy is still getting over the loss of her dad when her mum goes away & her uncle & his boyfriend move in to babysit bringing their big personalities to a small town near Dunedin. (Ie near a place I have lived - I had no idea it was set here!) it‘s a murder mystery with lots of swears and sequins. And there‘s a spooky old abandoned hospital which I think might be modelled on the one above! ⬇️

This is Rob Delaney‘s memoir of his one year old son‘s cancer diagnosis, the year of surgery, chemo and hospitalisation and his death at two years old. It is shattering and I am glad I read it - to know a little of his beautiful boy Henry.
Back in 2007 my friend lost her 8yo daughter to cancer. I‘m glad this book exists and I think my friend would be too. It‘s angry and sad and messy and real.

Birthday pancakes and birthday books - I‘ve had a very blessed day. 💕 Thank you for all of your kind birthday wishes.
The biggest and best thing was that today was a follow up appointment for my sister and we found out her cancer is operable and hasn‘t spread. Thank you God 🙏

When I ordered this book I had no idea it was a kind of leather feel cover with the images and text cut into it. So pretty and the endpapers are gorgeous #teampurple #alsoteamByron #madbadanddangerous

Finally got my last book delivered from my #buybuybookdepository order @Cinfhen
All classics and just a bit inspired by the #furrowedmiddlebrowclub to try Susan Scarlet. I have to do a seperate post on how pretty this poetry book is 😍

In this heart breaking audiobook Amy Bloom recounts her husband‘s diagnosis of alzheimers and his decision to research and pursue an assisted end to life. Ultimately this is a celebration of their love but also an insight into early stage alzheimers and the difficulty and grief of being a partner becoming a caregiver, and where and how they found support. Really good as an audiobook and narrated by the author.

I can‘t remember how this book came to my attention but I have been enthralled by it all week. Min is a young Korean American man who has moved to Seoul to try and find some kind of connection. He is nearly friendless with just a “low key” relationship with girlfriend Yu Jin. Then he is told that Yu Jin has committed suicide. In total shock he begins to investigate Yu Jin‘s life to find the truth. We also hear from Yu Jin in alternating chapters⬇️

#Islandvibes Image of my hotel room on Waiheke Island last week.

Oh man this book. I loved Antoinette (the child who grows up to be Bertha in Jane Eyre). Rhys‘ writing is beautiful and although there is violence and tension around Antoinette, I revelled in her survival. And then we spend some time in Rochester‘s head and he made me So Angry. I loved this reading experience and at the same time I want to wring some necks!

I love Garth Nix. This series is so much fun and I hope there‘s more to come (this is book 2 in the Left Handed Booksellers series). If you like Ben Aaronovitch‘s Rivers of London series you might enjoy this - although it doesn‘t have the police side - there is a similar link to historic and mythical magic through England, and here you have a sleuthing force of booksellers with special powers. Huge fun and just what I needed.

(Not book related)
Ohhh we‘re so cute. No way did we eat mummy‘s referral letter for an X-ray. Nope. Not us. Also haven‘t been stealing dish cloths out of the sink. Nah uh. That lizard? The one without a tail? He just came inside for a rest I think. We were sleeping so we wouldn‘t know.

On the one hand this book is a treasure - Billie Holiday telling her life story in her own words. There feels like very little interference from the “ghostwriter” William Dufty. On the other hand, there is no addition of context from Dufty either - Billie talks about people and places that you‘ll probably need to Google and skips over many incidents with little detail. ⬇️

My pick for #TitlesandTunes #Islandvibes is Wide Sargasso Sea which I‘ve been meaning to read for ages (I‘m on a Jean Rhys kick at the moment). It‘s set in Jamaica and so I chose a song that was written by a Jamaican to go with it. Cherry Oh Baby was written by Eric Donaldson but I grew up listening to the UB40 version. I‘m sure the song and the book have VERY different vibes!

Thank you so much for this book @Reggie I absolutely loved it! It‘s such a beautiful object too, I will always treasure it. 😍 A slim 102 pages, I read it in one sitting. A creepy fairytale vibe with a mystery at its heart to figure out. I thought this was very clever and I loved trying to figure out the little clues along the way. 🙌 It‘s a national holiday here today so this was a lovely way to spend my morning.

I finally finished the Love Medicine tetralogy (apparently that‘s what a 4 book series is called). While still excellent this one has the fewest stars from me - possibly because my favourite older characters aren‘t in the foreground and something in the plot that didn‘t get resolved disturbed me. I think I understand why it ends that way but if anyone else reads this I‘d love to discuss it!
Also here‘s my library in autumn - not spring here 😊🍁🍂

Severance - Apple TV. Not related to this book or to Severance by Ling Ma.

Holy crap this series is So Good! (if you like speculative fiction) It‘s the near future & one company has pioneered a small operation that allows you to split your work self from your outer self. Your work self does the work with no stress from your outside life and vice versa.

I mean it has John Turturro and Christopher Walken 🙌🙌 @Reggie I think you might like this

And I wanted to show you that when you have a protected Pohutakawa on your property, you build your wall around it. Pohutakawa often line the beaches around here with low branches reaching onto the sand - often good for sitting on or under after a swim.

A Little Free Library at the end of my windy beach walk on Takapuna beach. 😍 (north shore of Tamaki Makaurau)

I really enjoyed this. It‘s definitely a slow character study of a book and if you get queasy about blood etc this is not for you. I‘m going to take a leap of imagination (probably unwarranted) and say this is a bit like Moshfegh‘s Year of R&R meets SKJ‘s Mongrels. An isolated young female artist is trying to get along in a world where she doesn‘t seem to fit. Mostly because she‘s a vampire.
I think @batsy would enjoy this and @Reggie ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

My Belarusian friend told me years ago I should read this 2015 book. Bill Browder lived in Moscow after the fall of communism running a fund for Western investors. He was shocked by the criminal actions of some of the oligarchs and began exposing them through research and the media. He became a target and his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky paid the ultimate price.

This is a hard book to review because it is so unusual. It‘s going to be interesting to see if it keeps me thinking over time.
This is something of a “concept” book. Fiction written as in the style of non fiction which also reflects the characters skewing of reality. C, the widow of an avant- grade artist/author named X is researching her deceased wife. X tried on many personalities and disguises and it has always been unclear what was “real”. ⬇️

@Cinfhen LOOK what just arrived!!!! It is so beautiful and precious. It‘s a sunny day so I was trying to photograph the beautiful colours in the sun and so you get 4 photos instead of one 😂
Thank you so much Cindy, it is the most beautiful thing, I‘ve always loved coloured glass and I will think of you every time we put up our tree. I‘m so amazed it got here in one piece!!! 💕💕

Hooray! The Green Dolphin book store is in the Litsy database now. This is my second haul from this second hand store that has such a good children‘s section and has a great section of author biographies. Catnip for me! The Secret Gardens book is a non fiction book about the “golden period” of children‘s books in the late nineteenth century. @LeahBergen

On a whim, I chose this book off the International Man Booker long list. I think inspired by @rockpools yearly deep dive into this prize list. Why I chose the chunkiest book? 🤷🏻‍♀️ Masochism? Anyhow, no matter how interesting I make this review sound most of my friends here would hate this book. You have been warned. (Generally my most tepid reviews get the most stack adds 😂😂) I almost gave up on this half way. But I ended up liking it. ⬇️

I really enjoyed this - went in with low expectations as some reviews weren‘t great. I do see that it is long and she does squeeze a lot of current hot topics in there. For a while I thought, oh this is a literary work about a woman in mid life crisis - not a mystery really. And then the mystery ramps up again and becomes the focus. I loved the setting, and the protagonist remembering her old school days. ⬇️

Loved this! It‘s set up as a travel guide to the 14th century, so rather than detailing all the events of the century, Mortimer explains what the cities and towns are like, where you might sleep, what you should wear, what you might eat, how you‘ll get around, what you‘ll see on the streets etc etc. Really fascinating & gave me a lot of “did ya know‘s” to bother my husband with 😂 I think even he gasped at the cure for quinsy ⬇️Tw animal cruelty

I am so impressed by this memoir in essays that reads almost like connected short stories. I appreciated that Minnie wanted to focus on a few pivotal moments in her life - it seems more the path a writer would take than a conventional “star” and I‘m intrigued to see if she writes something else. There were some little nuggets of wisdom she and her mother came to in later years that really hit home for me - right book, right time. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
⬇️

Finally! @CarolynM thank you so much for gifting me this book a few years ago. I really enjoyed it. Spent half a day gardening in the sun and then sat in the shade and devoured this in one sitting. There is a mystery here as to what happened to two friends who were so close in University, that now, years later one feels some sense of guilt about the others death. The feel of University life from the early 90s was wonderful nostalgia for me ⬇️

First of all, massive kudos to Dorothy West for her career - and what inspiration to continue your art through your eighties 🙌 (screen shot from The Paris Review)
This novel was heading for 5 stars but ended quite abruptly. I do wonder if West‘s age or health put some pressure to tie things up. Aside from that this was a unique look at an upper class black family in their holiday home organising a wedding in the 50s. It looks primarily at ⬇️

I decided I would finish the Love Medicine series - I‘d read two and loved them (Love Medicine and Tracks). I loved being in Erdrich‘s hands again as she unpacks the regrets and secrets of a whole family. In this one, everyone is a little broken and unlikeable but it feels like Erdrich wants to show humans warts and all, and sometimes it‘s mostly warts! 😋 Really enjoyed this and looking forward to the next one.

@LeahBergen posted about Elizabeth Gudge a while ago so I looked at my library for any of her books. They had this title (not this pretty edition though) and it was delightful! Published in 1946 but set in 1842 when an orphaned girl goes to live with a mysterious uncle at Moonacre Manor. It is very whimsical and almost fairy tale like - but what I liked best were the food descriptions - so many suppers and feasts in glorious detail! 😋

Loved this, not quite as much as I loved Never Let Me Go, but again Ishiguro has a marvellous skill of dropping the reader into a dystopian world and letting them see it only through the eyes of someone naive who also doesn‘t know exactly what is going on. Little by little you figure a few things out - but I wanted to know more! This time you‘re seeing the world as an Artificial Friend made to support a young teen girl.

My first Ann Patchett! I absolutely loved this and wished it was longer. As others have said, this is a character driven novel - it‘s like you‘re dropped in to a 24 hour period to spend time with a family while they go through a life changing event. You get to know each of them, their worries, their frustrations, their love for each other - but you don‘t get to unpack all the whys and how‘s of how they got to where they are. ⬇️

It took a few weeks but I finally finished this audiobook. Juliet Stevenson does an incredible job of making each character sound unique. I loved this - more for Eliot‘s social commentary than the plot per se. Eliot‘s thoughtfulness and insight seems remarkably modern at times, the way she shows gossip and group think, women stifled in the narrowness of their roles in some cases, turned prissy and manipulative in others. ⬇️

A wonderful final paragraph… George Eliot giving kudos to quiet, unheralded lives.

Another second hand #bookhaul These were finds at a local charity shop.

So far in my quest to read my shelves, I‘ve read 4 books I own, bought 19 more and been gifted 4. 😂😂 I think I‘m going to have to buy more shelves - that‘s the real answer!

And book haul 2 - writers autobiographies - Fay Weldon (signed), Agatha Christie and E Nesbit. 😍 #greendolphin #secondhandbooks

Here‘s the fiction I bought from Green Dolphin books - Joan Aiken, Noel Streatfeild and tiny editions of Baldwin and Buck. #greendolphin

I found such a cool bookshop today - stumbled upon it while getting my daughter a bag for University - it doesn‘t have a listing in the database but this is pretty close. It‘s named after the Elizabeth Goudge book @LeahBergen and it‘s got a great selection of vintage childrens books. Book haul to follow! #greendolphin #secondhandbooks

Thank you so much for this book @Reggie it was weird and wonderful! I‘m so looking forward to you reading it because many stories could be interpreted wildly differently and I‘m keen to discuss! Ling Ma writes in a very realistic style but in most stories there is one singular element that is surreal, that shocks the reader, but is accepted as rational in the world Ma has created. Some stories seem to be detailing a legacy of trauma or numbness⬇️

A little box of goodness arrived on my doorstep the other day. Thank you @Cinfhen ! They look and smell gorgeous! It was good timing because that afternoon a huge downpour began and the low lying areas to the South and West of me all flooded. Worst climate event New Zealand has ever had - ⬇️

This 1996 novel was the deepest point of my TBR and I‘m glad I got to it. This was Anita Rau Badami‘s debut novel and I really enjoyed her writing and her characters. We start with Kamini‘s POV, a young Indian woman who has moved to Canada and trying to communicate with her widowed mother Saroja back in India. She remembers fragments of her childhood as they moved around India as her father managed railway development.⬇️

#audiowalk
Thought I‘d give you a look at one of my local cliff top walks - full tide and pretty decent waves so there was no point heading down the stairs today!
I am LOVING Middlemarch. I‘m totally obsessed and listening to it every chance I get. This is definitely going to be one of my most favourite 19th century classics. 🙌

Thank you so much for this book @Cathythoughts I thoroughly enjoyed it! Read a chunk of it on a boat trip up in the Bay of Islands.
I have never read anything that made prison life so vivid and real. Romy‘s story and those of her fellow inmates were compelling. The POV of her prison tutor was interesting too - but the inclusion of sections from Kaczynski (the unabomber) seemed out of place. ⬇️

Thank you to @jlhammar & #nunlit for encouraging me to read this modern classic languishing on my TBR. It tells the story of Oby, a convent in the 13th and 14th century, through a few generations of its nuns and prioresses. This is a history told through the small details of lives and we switch from character to character building a sense of the community of nuns and the people that visit them. Just a delight for me as a history lover 😍

I‘m probably the last person on Litsy to read this! I needed to be in the right head space as I‘d heard it was very sad. And yes it is - but I felt like I was learning such a lot about alcoholism and this hard nosed, hard done by, community that Shuggie lives in - that it was also fascinating and that made it a fast read. Stuart manages to show the depths of alcoholism and poverty with great humanity. A 5 star read for me.