#NameChallenge
Thanks for the tag @Aimeesue !
@Leftcoastzen if you want to play, spell your name with the titles of books 🙄

This might be the most popular book on Litsy that I hadn't read until now, which seems ironic at first glance considering this is a work about social outcasts. But maybe it's not so incongruous: as readers in an increasingly non-reading world, it's tempting to want to retreat into our worlds of imagination. We are all of us Constance, wanting to make the effort to connect to others, even as our inner Merricat tempts us to withdraw. Loved it 🖤

This strange gem begins in a Buenos Aires asylum in 1907 where a bunch of the doctors are creeping on the head nurse as a series of horrific experiments are undertaken to probe the boundaries of life and death. Not weird enough? Then we flash forward a hundred years to glimpse the life of an artist obsessed with integrating the human body and its various parts into shocking exhibitions. Dark and funny, with a sharp wit underlying the strangeness.

#unpopularopinion
I'm not a fan of the kind of satire used in this collection: once I saw what each story was driving at, they just seemed more like dreary exercises, no matter how much violence, fantasy, or dark comedy was piled on. The ones with less overt satirical elements and fantasy were oddly dry, as if they'd been edited to death. I liked one story: 'The Hospital Where', which reads like a real nightmare: wish more were like that one!

Sometimes when words like 'beautiful' get used too often to describe books or movies, I get a little nervous. Is it 'beautiful' because the writer cheated? Bel Canto doesn't cheat: I believed the beauty in this novel. Most are probably familiar with the plot: terrorists take over a private opera performance in the VP's estate in an unnamed South American country. When the takeover gets protracted, a routine establishes itself and...just read it!

Um...okay Goodreads, I guess I'll just have to trust your algorithms on this. Maybe there was some nuance in The Little Prince that I missed?

Absolutely delightful: its classic status is well-earned. It reminded me of an inverted Alice in Wonderland: instead of traveling to an imaginary world, the Little Prince comes from a far-away land to look at what hides beneath the surface of our own world. There are great lessons about the power of empathy, devotion, and why you must never catch yourself thinking like a grown-up.

Not what I was expecting, but I still enjoyed it. I thought the humor landed somewhere between Bill Bryson and David Sedaris (but closer to Bryson). But it was also serious at times, reflecting on what it means to be financially successful, male, and white, while living in Maine (evidently not known for its diversity). It felt honest rather than for show, and for all his talk of being a narcissist, the tone is pleasantly self-deprecating.

This is superficially similar to Year of Magical Thinking, both in content, this focusing on her daughter's death 2 years after her husband's, and in style, obsessive spirals of thoughts & memories. But her focus here is new: she searches her memories of Quintana to understand her wisdom. What did her precociousness as a child say about her upbringing? Her comments about death? And what do the answers reveal about her own views on aging and dying?

Excited to join the #nyrbbookclub this month! I did enjoy this almost-a-pick. As others pointed out, Hardwicke's writing sparkles and made me consider, what does a collection of memories of others say about the memory owner? Or is it a riff on the act of remembering, how it creates these characters, like an author of fiction might? The end struck me as no different from the beginning and the flatness kept it from a pick- otherwise I was intrigued.

#brooklynbookfestival #bookhaul
I've always been resolving to try out small presses, so I'm really excited about this haul. Two of these were on my radar- Vesaas' The Birds from Archipelago (and put on my radar by praise from @BarbaraBB ) and Apostol's Insurrecto from Soho. Also picked up Kincaid's Party: A Mystery (Akashic) for my 2-year-old niece, and Larraquy's Comemadre (Coffee House Press), which I am trying to resist reading immediately.

Lovely day at the #brooklynbookfestival Took advantage of some small press sales, got to see Edwidge Danticat talk about tragedy & trauma in her work (and 2 new to me authors- David Chariandy & Maria Tumarkin) and ended up in the gorgeous church shown here to see Joyce Carol Oates and Marlon James in conversation about a range of topics relevant to their work. Sorry for the lack of corroborating author photos- you'll have to take my word for it 😉

#7covers7days #covercrush Day 7
@merelybookish

Last one: a book of stories that listens back.

This was fun- I didn't really know what my favorite covers in my collection were before choosing them.

@Geeklet feel like playing? Post 7 covers in 7 days, no explanations necessary, and tag a new person each day.

#7covers7days #covercrush Day 6
@merelybookish
@JacintaMCarter want to join in? Post 7 covers in 7 days, no explanations needed, and tag someone new each day.

#7days7covers #covercrush Day 5
@merelybookish
@Susanita if you want to play, 7 covers posted in 7 days, no explanations & tag someone new each day.

#7days7covers #covercrush Day 4
@merelybookish
@GripLitGrl want to play? Post 7 covers in 7 days, no explanation needed, and tag a new person each day.

#7covers7days #covercrush Day3
@merelybookish
@Kimberlone feel like playing? Post 7 covers over 7 days, no explanation needed, and tag a new person every day.

#7days7covers #covercrush Day 2
@merelybookish
I know @Squidapus enjoys a lot of sci-fi and fantasy books with pretty covers- he's tagged if he wants to post one cover per day, no explanations needed and tag someone new each day.

#7covers7days Day 1

Thanks @merelybookish for the tag!

@tournevis not sure if you've already been tagged, but if you want to play, it's 7 covers in 7 days, no explanations needed, & tag someone new each day.

After his newborn brother is diagnosed with a life-threatening genetic condition, a boy begins having dreams where an angel appears, saying they can fix his brother. He is relieved until discovering the 'angels' are actually wasps from a new nest in his backyard and the promise may not be all it appears. As creepy and unnerving as the illustrations suggest. And this is a middle grade book, so parents take note with Halloween coming up 🐝🎃🐝

Tough book to rate. Starts with a bizarre true crime story from 1970s Alabama involving a reverend who killed spouses and family members after taking out life insurance policies in their names. Then...a biography of Harper Lee. Eventually it gets to her work on what would have been her 2nd book, the true story of the murders. But the quick murder mystery start halts too abruptly: I enjoyed learning about Lee's life, but less would have been more.

My rule for the Cup of Unread Authors is I can't draw a new name until I've read one work from the previous name drawn. And the latest author could not be more different from the last pick of Hunter S. Thompson.
Never came across the tagged book growing up, but looking forward to it from all the love it gets.

Thompson was 22 when he wrote this but couldn't get it published until he tried again nearly 40 years later in 1998. The sentences aren't bad, but they are put to poor use. The MC gets a job with the only English-language paper in Puerto Rico, and befriends two other talented yet underappreciated young journalists with violent tendencies. They are bonded by their contempt for the paper, Puerto Rico, and other people. Sexist, racist, and angry 👎

Swamplandia and The World of Darkness are two Florida theme parks in this novel, both given unflattering, behind the scenes portrayals, and somehow I still wanted to visit both. I think Russell's novel explores why we like places like this- how much our imagination can fill in the gaps of what is obviously phony. It's a coming of age novel focusing on the gator-wrestler children of Swamplandia, often funny but also equal parts disturbing 👇

A completely unique reading experience. We meet six friends as children and the perspective wanders between each of them, who think in poetic soliloquies about what they see in nature and how they see their own personalities compared to the others. We follow them into adulthood for select scenes and they do the same sort of thing with adult subjects. The title is well-chosen: Woolf is fascinated by the rhythms of daily life and its repetitions 👇

Although this technically follows a linear timeline starting with the night her husband dies, Didion writes it in spirals, returning over and over to thoughts and memories she had at the time. In doing so, she captures the mental life of grief in exacting detail--all the guilt, detachment, and fantasies that the death is somehow temporary. That Didion was able to write with such insight and clarity about this experience is pretty incredible.

Is it possible this is the first time I've seen 'Na-uh' in print?
I have so many questions:
1) I'm not around kids much...do they still say this?
2) If the answer to #1 is yes, is there common advice to writers to avoid kid-slang? Is there even much other kid-slang that isn't just errors in grammar? I was trying to think of examples but I'm drawing a blank.
3) Is the accepted spelling for the common reply, 'Ya-huh'? Or 'Yuh-huh'?

#Star #AyUpAugust
Hilola Bigtree was a star alligator wrestler and the biggest draw for the gator island theme park of the title. But her death from cancer left the novel's 14-year-old protagonist Ava without a mother and the family's park in danger of bankruptcy. I'm only 77 pages in, but loving this one so far. A little uneasy about the somewhat low Litsy & Goodreads ratings though- hope it doesn't lose steam as it goes 🤞

#womenintranslationmonth gave me the kick I needed to finally read this. I fell in love with the movie, so I wasn't surprised to love the book too. Satrapi vividly imagines her childhood in a series of meaningful episodes that alternate between humor and horror. For all the heartache of seeing revolution and war through a child's eyes, the soul of the book is the love she and her parents exchange through it all. The artwork is creative perfection.

Final outcome of weekend project to double our bookshelves. Not pictured in the 'before' shot: additional piles of books that were multiplying around the apartment.
#tinyapartmentbiglibrary

I enjoyed Laing's approach to this part-memoir, part-mini bios on loneliness. It's difficult to do the topic justice without appearing self-pitying. Instead, her account of moving to NYC after a breakup and dealing with loneliness is frank and insightful. She threads her own experiences with those of artists like Hopper, Warhol, Wojnarowicz, and others. An interesting exploration into why a feeling that is so universal causes so much shame.

I didn't have the easiest time with this collection, but I respected Paley's writing, very dense but funny too. The stories are slices of life, often involving reoccurring characters, a group of women from New York who are friends and activists, though the stories are less concerned with politics than their relationships. Despite the realist overtones, conversations often veer into strange philosophical territory that isn't easy to parse.

"You are not an ugly person all the time; you are not an ugly person ordinarily; you are not an ugly person day to day."
Kincaid opens this extended essay by gently chiding a tourist in Antigua for their ignorance and follows with a description of how Antigua's history with colonialism and slavery led to its present issues with government corruption. The tone is punchy, sarcastic, and light, without making light of an important subject.

Excellent collection of essays. It's easy to understand the fame of the title essay, in which Baldwin reflects on his recently deceased father's life and their relationship. He is equally good at presenting lengthy, well-reasoned arguments and in providing lyrical descriptions of past events from his life. A lot of essays seem to be better at one or the other, but it's rare to find both working so well together.

4 of the books pictured are from yesterday's #bookhaul at Inquiring Minds, a very cute bookshop in New Paltz, NY with the kind of rambling shelves that leave you pleasantly disoriented. A nearby record shop had an impressive book selection, so I picked up Hopscotch there.
Photo was taken at our AirBNB, a home that was converted from a train station built in 1902. The sliding panel at the top was the ticket window.

To start Day 2 of our mini vacation in the Catskills, this was the lovely wooded backdrop to my morning reading. Woolf has an abundance of quotable poetry that would perfectly complement the scene, but I had to go with this passage of one of the children listening to a sermon in church. "His rough and hairy voice is like an unshaven chin" cracked me up ?

#Animal #AyUpAugust
A few of the fierce creatures lurking in my TBR shelf.. 😨🐊🐍🐯
@squirrelbrain @Cinfhen

Hauntings are often explained as a spirit returning because of an earthly trauma so intense that the sheer force of it propels the wronged soul back to life. This novel doesn't just reference that lore, it inhabits every part of it: how it feels for both the soul and the haunted. And Morrison also depicts how the living can be said to be haunted by their own past traumas, in this case, those suffered while enslaved.👇

I'll join the chorus in mourning Toni Morrison's passing, and remembering her incredible career. She is truly one of the all-time greats of literature. I can say that with confidence after just 4.5 books of hers: I can't wait to read them all. I'm about halfway through Beloved and am completely under its spell.

Denver being a bit of a #MardyBum . But it's understandable, after losing ghostly company to her mom's new boyfriend.
#AyUpAugust
@squirrelbrain @Cinfhen

#CryMeARiver #AyUpAugust

A bit on the nose, I know. Though it's described as just a pool- maybe she would have had to shed a few more, or have grown even larger to deliver a river? 😧🏊

@squirrelbrain @Cinfhen

A long, disorienting novel about members of an obscure group of young poets in Mexico called the 'visceral realists' that is as unique a reading experience as you can hope for in a novel. It's got an odd structure- three parts, 1 and 3 from the diary of a newcomer to the poetry group from 1975-1976, and then part 2 455 pages from countless POV's over two decades (1976-1996), all being interviewed about the 2 young founders of the group.👇

This felt more like a series of linked short stories than a novel. Although there are many common circumstances between the two families joined by marriages and adoptions, there is no overarching plot binding the different accounts. It doesn't need one: each chapter stands on its own- the writing can be dreamy, comic, or tragic, and it builds to intense places. Erdrich is 3/3 for me, and I can't wait to follow these characters into other novels.

#SweetJane #LilithJuly
First thing I thought of for 'Jane': I've only seen the film adaptation, but would love to see a production. Great performances all around in the film, but am I alone in thinking that Alice is the only one of the bunch I'd actually like to meet in real life? The rest bugged me for different reasons, but they were still good characters.
@Cinfhen @KarenUK @kindalim

Lots of jokes before page 1, huh Mr. Chabon?
This isn't quite as metafictional as it sounds going in, but it is a phony memoir in the vein of Roth's Operation Shylock. The key difference is, instead of Chabon going on some kind of crazy adventure, he's relaying #thestory of his grandparents, as told to him by his dying grandfather. Like the other Chabon's I've read, I didn't gobble this up, just savored every word. Thanks for the rec @Cinfhen !

#Top6Reads @Cinfhen
My favorites of the year so far- I got bored of the usual stacks so I made a monument of my fiction picks, next to a nonfiction audio tower. I think Mr. Fox is my favorite, followed by Invisible Cities and A Constellation of Vital Phenomenon.
Honorable mentions to Station Eleven and Stiff.

#GetOuttheMap #LillithJuly
There are no maps for the cities Marco Polo describes to Kublai Khan in this dreamy, unconventional masterpiece. His tales of city after imaginary city are beautifully written, but also feel like philosophical mysteries to solve. Not sure what Calvino had in mind, but it felt like a struggle to grasp all the dichotomies the world gets split into, and what they share in common.
@KarenUK @Cinfhen

#GoodnightSaigon #WanderingJune
I have many humbling moments when it comes to literary stuff. This novella came to mind for today's prompt because of the film adaptation, and I needed Wikipedia to explain that the location was changed in the film...and that Conrad died about four decades before the Vietnam war 😳 (does this also mean the novel lacks a surfing aficionado U.S. army lieutenant who loves the smell of napalm in the morning? 😂).

After being blown away by What I Loved and The Blazing World, my expectations may have been a tad high going in. This has 4 parts that take place while the MC Iris is in grad school, but they aren't chronological and feel more like linked short stories. For me, Pt 1 was the most interesting and it was a little disappointing that nothing from it reemerges later. Lots of intriguing ideas, but some parts dragged and it didn't quite hang together.

Post 2/2 The basement level boasts large historical, academic, and children's sections. Interspersed with the winding shelves are local art pieces and displays of local artifacts with historical notes. As if all this weren't enough there is a rare book room with all kinds of gorgeous old tomes (including the Daisy Miller pictured). AND an entire shop selling prints of lithograph and woodcut art where we got the top three pictures👇