The #WomensPrize always picks one weird one that nobody likes. This year it's Crooked Seeds, and I actually did like it. In a future New South Africa water is rationed and the government is reclaiming private property. Compensation is not forthcoming because the economy has gone to shit. Deirdre is a middle aged alcoholic with a massive chip on her shoulder, and bases her whole identity around being an amputee. Something is found buried in the ⤵️

My current audiobook. I'm only 24% in, so not entirely sure where it's going, but it looks like nowhere good 😅 The MC is an utterly unlikable ball of narcissism and unresolved trauma. I can't help thinking that if the Women's Prize really had to have rich people immigrant problems , this is a better choice than the boring Persians. And if they wanted women being gross and transgressive, All Fours has nothing on this woman's skincare rituals.

Based on a real event where 27 migrants drowned in the Channel because the British couldn't get to them in time and the French wouldn't help, even while the boat was still in French waters. A semi-stream-of-consciousness narrative where the French navy emergency dispatcher tries to justify her actions and her words, refusing to bear the collective guilt and responsibility of society. Powerful and uncomfortable. #InternationalBooker #Booker

I thought Neneh Cherry's memoir sounded like a niche choice for the #WomensPrizeNF shortlist, but you don't need to be a fan to get a lot out of this book. It's a time capsule. It's the emerging music scene and countercultures of NYC in the 70s and London in the 80s. It's Jazz history. It's about being bi-racial and with family ties to three continents. It's about food, friendship, addiction, the AIDS epidemic, art, and an unconventional life.

Yes!

My #readyourkindle numbers for May. Christ on a Bike is a repeat from an earlier month, so I should really prioritise that 😬 Will I get to any of them? Maybe. I managed one in April 😅
@CBee

"I had been trying to be invisible - trying to blend in - when, of course, in Sweden I couldn't. And while being in the States would always be a relief because it was a place of colour, even there I still didn't entirely fit in because of being Swedish and from an unconventional background. I had always been aware of my in-between-ness.
But after that first time in London, I never felt compromised in the same way again."

This was great! I have little interest in the French Impressionists, and knew very little about Gauguin (most of which turned out to be inaccurate), but this was highly interesting and superbly entertaining as well as informative. What a character! What a life! The book also includes a lot of prints and photos of artwork, on high quality paper. I'm sad this didn't make the shortlist for the #WomensPrizeNF

Thing 2 likes to have a lot of options, including non-fiction and manga. He's currently reading The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

This is the 20th time we take part in the twice yearly #Deweys #24hourReadathon ! Ten years of family readathons.
#RaisingReaders

There will be no pic of Thing 1's #readathon stack, as he's audiobooking The Raven Cycle for the umpteenth time whilst working on his Final Project for his Art & Design course.

The Spouse goes for a smaller #readathon stack. And tbh he will probably just read Nights at the Circus until his head spins and then either fall asleep for three hours or wander off to do something else (like prepare food, because I'm for sure not going to do it today 😂)

#Deweys #24hourReadathon

It's #readathon time! My stack has a bunch of short reads for when I need a break from the chunksters. My kindle is there to represent The Hero of Ages and Warbreaker that I need to catch up on for the #CosmereBuddyRead 😅

Sparkling, darkly elegant, and deliberately crude. A fictionalised account of the courtly intrigue and censorship under Louis XIV when French folktales were given the name "fairytales" and standardised in the female-dominated literary salons. Some wild historical info, and a lot of dark tales and fates.

Soft pick. I probably shouldn't have read this directly after an Agatha Christie. Where she is charming and witty, this was charming but silly. And the plotting and false leads weren't half as fiendish. I also didn't entirely buy the 1925 setting. However, the mystery and the unlikely grandfather & teenage boy detective team grew on me, and I might give the next book a go at some point.

#Eastercrime

Not one of Agatha Christie's best, but great fun nonetheless. It definitely showcases her sense of humour. It's pretty much a spoof spy thriller, with all the characters acting like they're something out of Wodehouse. For a while I was sure I had worked out the solution to the mystery, but of course I hadn't 😂

Did she really, though? First of all, it's "hear, hear", not "here, here", and secondly, this takes place in France so she would be a lot more likely to say "well said" (Bien dit!)

And the book was doing so well up until now.

Time for some classic #Eastercrime
I read (and watched) a lot of Agatha Christie in my teens, and the premise of this one sounds familiar, but I can't remember who the killer is or why. Hopefully it won't come back to me as I read 😅

Very unsettling mystery! And a fast read. I would have done the whole thing in one go if I hadn't made the mistake of starting it just before midnight. As it was I still read half the book before going nervously to bed 😅

I have the sushi cover, and I just have to say that it has absolutely nothing to do with the book. At all. Unlike the other one which features clues from the story.

This book has been described to me as cerebral crime/horror, and I sincerely hope that it's dark and unwholesome and full of fiendish puzzles.

#Eastercrime

How did BOTH of these books make it to the #WomensPrize shortlist? Wasn't one (more than) enough?
They both feature serious broader issues that affect women, but take a tone that is supposed to be funny and have protagonists that nobody can identify with.
They're both about privileged women who implode their lives because rich people have trauma too. That's 1/3 of the #shortlist (maybe more 😵, I haven't read them all yet).
Why?

The Fellowship was a lovely idea with memorable characters, but it seemed like the book had more descriptions of clothes and food than puzzles. (And there were inconsistencies!) It was also terribly wholesome and life-affirming and full of mindfulness-style wisdom. And since I'm a total grouch I found the sum total to be a bit dull.

Easing into #Eastercrime with this book that isn't really crime (I think), but a mystery and a lot of puzzles. It's also one of my #ReadYourKindle picks for April.

Very interesting and informative, but a bit technical at times.

The TL;DR summary:
People are the worst. We destroy everything with our greed and short sightedness. But not all is lost, and some people are doing awesome things. To save the oceans (and our future) we need to work together globally, but also give the local people of each area a say. And we need to cut carbon emissions. By a lot. Immediately.

#WomensPrizeNF #shortlist

Step 1 - Get the governments of poor countries to sell you fishing quotas for a steal
Step 2 - Overfish their waters, wreak their coastline, and destroy the natural habitats of the area
Step 3 - When the impoverished former local fishermen of the area risk their lives getting to Europe in search for work, call them "economic refugees" and "illegal migrants" and deny them entry.

??

My nominations for #CampLitsy25 before I overthink it too much 😅

@squirrelbrain @megabooks @barbarabb

Whether or not you celebrate Easter, you can join in the Norwegian tradition of #Eastercrime
Over the next two weeks, read a crime novel (true crime counts), or anything with a mystery. Bonus for reading outdoors. Watch an Agatha Christie re-run, or a new crime show. Play a board game (bonus if it's Cluedo or other sleuthing game) or do a trivia quiz or a jigsaw puzzle. Go for a walk, then eat all the best foods and treats. Tag me in your reads!

I forgot to post my list, but here are my #ReadYourKindle books. I'm quite eager to read them all, but will I actually do it? Probably not, since my kindle also contains 3 books from this year's #WomensPrize for fiction, 1 from the #InternationalBooker and the #CosmereBuddyRead books 🤷🏻‍♀️ I know it all counts, but damn I really want to read these four as well.

@CBee

Viking poo 💩

One of the most distinctive character voices I have come across. Tibb Ingleby carries this novel on her tiny, pale shoulders. There are some pacing issues, and the plot goes a bit wild. I was in distress for most of the last third 😂 I think this should have been shortlisted, for Tibb, for making the Tudor era come alive, for addressing topics that I shall not reveal here. While not perfect, this is a really strong debut!
#WomensPrize

Description of Bergen, Norway c. 1200. Can confirm that 800 years later, this part is still the same 😂

#WomensPrizeNF

Misleading. At the end one of the women is still unaware that the collision has taken place. So many words saying so little in this book. I didn't connect with the characters at all, as they didn't seem real or realistic. This must be on the #WomensPrize longlist for its #MeToo topic and not for its prose, plot, or characters. The last 3rd had character development and nuance around consent, perception, and self that saved it from the pan.

The first few minutes of this video about how the brain processes/predicts sensory input, really made me think of Mistborn burning Atium 😂
https://youtu.be/wo_e0EvEZn8?si=Z-IGSJ_DFlyBgrqH

#CosmereBuddyRead

It's the zombie apocalypse, but it's also a poetic allegory of grief, loss, depression, issues of memory, consumerism, probably a few things I missed. Somehow it works.
Passed it on to the Spouse and he loved it so much he already wants to read it again (and he almost never re-reads). Once I return it to the library I'm going to have to buy a copy to keep.

Books I had planned on working on this weekend. But we're all down with the flu or covid or some other devilry, and so far I've only managed half of It Lasts Forever. My head feels too heavy for my neck. I might just focus on the #CosmerBuddyRead instead. But I'll try to get started on Solenoid @RaeLovesToRead At least a couple of pages!

Reading the 2024 winner of the Ursula K Le Guin Prize. That's a strong opening!

This was very strange, and so very Russian. It contains almost every Russian trope and is full of allegory, including a modern Christ figure. Most of it is dialogue and digression, and almost every character has episodes of mania, delirium, or hysteria. It wore me out a bit by the end, and I had a lot of "wth is going on?!?" moments, but it's still a pick.

Library haul. All holds that came in at the same time. Because of course they did 😆 It's like requesting Birding and A Little Trickerie set off an avalanche.

For the most part this book has me in a constant state of rage, but this part made me laugh:
"Anyone who has been involved in feminist and left-wing politics will know that uniting anarchist feminists with trade union socialists is no mean feat." ?

Yes, it would take something like the common enemy of undercover cops literally emBEDDED in their homes. ?

#WomensPrize #NF

The downside to reading on Kindle. That's the zoomed in version of the map 🧐 I guess I'll just create my own headcanon map for where everything is in relation to each other, because I can't even make out what places are marked on the map - much less where they are 🤪
#CosmereBuddyRead

(continued from photo)
But Eden also served as a justification, a God-given excuse note for the brutal work. In the seventeenth century, arguments for colonial expansion regularly drew on Genesis, and God's injunction to man to subdue and have dominion over all creation; an attitude, I might add, that is directly responsible for the perilous state of our planet now.

Starting my journey to the Tower.

#FantasyFebruary

I have finally gotten started on the #CosmereBuddyRead but as I read all of Part One in one evening, I should be able to catch up 😅 What can I say, I enjoy a good heist plot and I find the magic system refreshingly different. And it reads a lot faster than Dostoyevsky or my current non-fiction read 😆

😳 Yes, that seems like a good place to draw the line. In fact, it seems to me that the psychiatrists who performed that service, teaching torturers to suppress their feelings of guilt, were doing the exact opposite of what their mental health mandate ought to be!

"The very same people who had it constantly drummed into them that the only language they understood was that of force, now decided to express themselves with force . . . To the expression: 'All natives are the same, the colonized reply: 'All colonists are the same.'"
Given the brutality of colonization, expressions of explosive violence by the oppressed were, in his view, inevitable in the opening phase of a liberation war.

Don't you hate it when you read what you at first think is a four book series, but then it turns out it's supposed to be a seven book series and the last anyone heard book five was due last year? 😣 I binged so hard on this series, and while the romance was starting to feel rather formulaic, the overarching plot was just getting going, and it's rare that books make me LOL this much. I want book 5 damnit!

Starting another Dostoevsky.

My January #ReadYourKindle list comprised of 20 books I meant to read in 2024. Painstakingly put together with lots of fiddling and swearing in pic collage only to discover that the white background was meant for a photo and disappeared when I saved, so I ended up having to screenshot it instead. I need a different editing app. And a pair of glasses 🤦🏻‍♀️
@CBee

Why did I think this book would be dull and difficult? It is full of dark humour and melodrama. So many morally grey characters. Generous villains, women who have fallen morally or socially, fanatics, absurd conversations, drunkards, a hapless side-character hero, romance, obsession, paranoia, high creep factor, Poles & Germans, questions of nihilism and exceptionalism. And Raskolnikov is no Luigi, but aren't we still asking the ❓ from the pic?

Part Five - High drama in every chapter!
Raskolnikov is full of paranoid rage but also determined to confess, Luzhin is even more dastardly than expected, Katerina Ivanova is even madder than Raskolnikov, and Sonya is in a constant state of terror. We get the most overwrought death bed scene ever.

All of you slackers who were supposed to join in the #CAPbuddyread are missing out 😂

Crime & Punishment part 4
Dunya has way too many admirers, most of whom are creeps.
Raskolnikov decides that misery loves company and messes with the head of a woman who seriously has enough on her plate already. Then presents himself for the most absurd police interview.

#CaPBuddyRead