Welcome to Litsy!

I‘ve been in quite the slump lately. Just finished one, and really enjoying this too! Hope this slump is over!

#MarchMagic Day 5: #HeartsOnCover or just one heart, singular. 🤣🥰

"The dense, dark night was cut down the middle, split into two black blocks of sleep. Where was she? Between the two pieces, looking at them (the one she had already slept and the one she had yet to sleep), isolated in the timeless and the spaceless, in an empty gap."

The narration by Rebecca Morris was amazing. It felt like I had Joana next to me, telling me hear innermost thoughts.

Near to the Wild Heart is a stream of consciousness, focusing on Joana‘s life, her being an orphan, growing into the woman she became and her not exactly enjoying being caged in by marriage she is no longer sure she wants

4 stars 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟

I‘ve posted my review if you want to know more:
http://bit.ly/2S3I8FA

"Her life was made up of complete little lives, of whole, closed circles, which isolated themselves from one another. Except that at the end of each, instead of dying and beginning life on another plane, inorganic or lower organic, Joana started over on the same human plane. Just different fundamental notes. Or just different supplementary ones, and the basic ones forever the same?"

"When I surprise myself in the depths of the mirror I get a fright. I can hardly believe that I have limits, that I am cut out and defined. I feel scattered in the air, thinking inside other beings, living in things beyond myself."

"Because the best phrase and always still the youngest, was: goodness makes me want to be sick. Goodness was lukewarm and light. It smelled of raw meat kept for too long. Without entirely rotting in spite of everything. It was freshened up from time to time, seasoned a little, enough to keep it a piece of lukewarm, quiet meat."

I don‘t know a thing, I am able to give birth to a child and I don‘t know a thing. God will receive my humility and will say: I was able to give birth to a world and I don‘t know a thing. I will be closer to Him and the woman with the voice. My child will move in my arms and I will tell myself: Joana, Joana this is good. I won‘t utter another word because the truth will be what pleases my arms.

One of my fave quotes from this book I finished yesterday!

Her eyes grew moist with soft happiness and gratitude. She had spoken... The words coming from before language, from the source, from the source itself. She moved closer to him, giving him her soul and nevertheless feeling complete as if she had drink down a world. She was like a woman.

It‘s been years since I read a book that made me this excited and surprised about what writers can DO with language. Probably one of the best novels I‘ve ever read. I always thought I didn‘t much like modernism other than Virginia Woolf (queen of my heart), but now I don‘t much like modernism apart from Virginia Woolf and Clarice Lispector.

People compare this to Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man but honestly this blew Joyce out of the water

My daily dose of Clarice at lunch

Everything waiting for midnight... - I am fooling myself, I need to return. I don‘t feel madness in my wish to bite stars, but the earth still exists. And because the first truth is the earth and the body. If the twinkling if the stars pains me, if this distant communication is possible, it is because something almost like a star quivers within me. Here I am back at the body. Return to my body.

Switching to this at lunch after reading 4321 this morning feels like switching to water after drinking something sludgy with illegal additives and sweeteners in... it makes this an even better book. Like THIS is what a bildungsroman can be like.

I‘m going to power through the last of Paul Auster tonight, congratulate myself on finishing, swear never to do that to myself then luxuriate in beautiful Clarice

Lunchtime ☺️

So pleased to be reading something brilliant and honest by a woman. I always love modernism by women more than by men

Just a few moments to get a page into this one before going to bed. This will be 3/50 books from my owned tbr to read and pass on to others this year.

I‘m crazy for translated fiction rn so I‘m glad I had this here

This was Clarice Lispector's debut novel but it's the second book I've read by her. I found this one just as mesmerizing.
#readharder2018

I wanted to like this book but I think I just wasn't in the right mindset to read it. I don't think it's a holiday time read. And I saw someone on Goodreads said to not read this one if you're reading Lispector for the first time. There are a few different perspectives in the book but for the most part, it's set in Joana's stream of thought through various phases of her life as she examines marriage, love, jealousy and life's meaning.

#butterbeer cookies! :) I'll post link to original recipe when I find it #harrypotter

Today's #booktober entry...books set in South America. Clarice Lispector is my favorite South American author, here are a few of her books set there. 💕

"With your teacher, she said, playing with intimacy, and she was white and smooth. Not miserable and not knowing anything, not abandoned, not dirty-kneed like Joana, like Joana! Joana got up and she knew that her skirt was short, that her blouse was clinging to her minuscule, hesitant bust. Flee, run to the beach, lie face-down in the sand, hide her face, listen to the sound of the sea."

Just finished this book. It was a difficult read, in a stream of consciousness style. Parts of it were better than others. Follows the interior state of Joana, from childhood to marriage, to her decision to make her own way in the world. Intriguing, but not page turning.

I fucking love you, CL. this book is perhaps one of the denser and tougher of hers, and I would not recommend it as a first CL to someone. still, reading is worth it- each sentence pounds, the way CL's usually do, and together the portrait of the viciously alive Joana is so full as to burst.

From the book Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector -

New book for the weekend :)

The distance that separates emotions from words. I've already thought about that. And the most curious thing is that the moment I try to speak not only do I fail to express what I feel but what I feel slowly becomes what I say.