Welcome to Litsy!

This is my favorite book so far this year. There aren't enough characters to expound on my love, but here's a few highlights:
💛 This has been compared to early Didion and Patti Smith (and I would add Erica Jong), and given the late 1970s setting, this appears deliberate & brilliant.
💛 Kushner plays with pacing to accentuate themes of speed and time. It's fascinating.
💛 There were jaw-droppingly exquisite passages that I had to stop & re-read.

"A funny thing about women and machines: the combination mace men curious. They seemed to think it had something to do with them." Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers

???

I'm all over the place:
🌏 The Bonneville Salt Flats in the 1970s
🌏 1970s NYC
🌏 1970s Rome and Lake Como
🌏 Rome and Milan during the first World War until the 1950s

#whereareyoumonday @Cupcake12

🙂

I‘ve been listening to this book for a few days but after a strong beginning I kind of lost what the book was about and couldn‘t make myself really care. So I am bailing. The good news is that I started another audiobook (I Have Some Questions For You) and that one is able to hold my attention so far! #1001books

I seem to feel much the same as many other Litsy reviewers about this book. There were descriptive parts I thoroughly enjoyed, like the section about riding a motorcycle on the salt flats, but overall it was a long listen that often lost my full attention. I‘m not sure what I was supposed to get from it, and it definitely jumped around confusingly at times.

#audiobook #1001books #Reading1001
#TBRTakedown September 2023

7-2-22: My 64th finished book of 2022! It‘s 1975 and Reno, a motorcycle riding artist is living in NYC. This story was a bit hard to follow and took me awhile to get through. Reno meets a group of artists, travels to Italy during a time of protests, comes back to NYC to start over after a break up and never gets her art going. The men all treat her poorly, as do most of the women. The 70s in NYC were a weird time of unrest. ⭐️⭐️⭐️📖#️⃣6️⃣4️⃣

#FallFinds #Flames

Kushner‘s books often divide readers, but I love her writing. 🔥 🔥🔥

Currently reading Flamethrowers. The rest isn‘t April stack.

Beautiful writing but I couldn‘t for the life of me engage with the story.

Straight into the next.

It just wasn't my style and I had a hard time following it.

...instead of a bottle they used a little stovetop espresso maker...

...The big inheritance question was who would get the guns....

None of it could be recreated. We'd eaten the lotus paste buns on a cold, damp November day...

One I've had on the shelf, from the library, for ages. 40 pages in and I've no idea where it's going...

A novel about class and belonging populated by a bunch of people pretending to be...I dunno, imagined versions of themselves. The writing is good, the language is good, but I got mired in this and have no real idea about what Kushner was trying to say. This one was so hyped (been on my TBR for years) and it did nothing for me.

Overall I enjoyed this book. Some parts were beautiful and fascinating - especially the motorcycle parts - and Kushner generally writes well. The parts about the New York art scene got a little long in the tooth, however.

@hermyknee - it arrived! I love opening stuff, so that was much fun, thank you!

😍 to all the coffee and that mug! The bookmark is really cool, too. I'm so super curious on that strawberry infused coffee.. like I want to try it now, but I'm going to force myself to wait until morning.

Thank you, again! Awesome box and looking forward to this read 😁

My current read. I received this along with The Mars Room and this one intrigued me a bit more, so it was up first!

Thank you, @Suet624 ! ❤️

So many critics loved this book. I have a huge book hangover from my last read and the words she writes are just words. I‘m not getting any feeling from it or even any desire to know more. You get the picture. With that glowing recommendation, if anyone wants to try it, I‘m happy to mail it to you.

Still TBR! #theflame #HeatofJuly @Cinfhen @BarbaraBB

Great

“The year is 1975 and Reno has come to New York intent on turning her fascination with motorcycles and speed into art. Her arrival coincides with an explosion of activity in the art world... Reno begins an affair with the son of a motorcycle magnate. Her relationship takes her to Italy where she falls in with a radical political group.”
#juneitselectrifying #coolrider

Pick

Interesting, but jarring. I don‘t think I knew enough about any of the cultural topics or incidents to make this book meaningful for me.

A little mini #bookhaul from my local used bookstore!

I've been horrible about the photo challenges, but here's my pick for a title that would make a great band name. #marchintoreading

This was #myfirstlitsypost two months ago! (Thanks to @Ebooksandcooks for liking!) #firsteverlitsypost

Today's #bookhaul from the library bookstore. Got everything for only $12! My husband made me leave and said I had to save some for next time.

And for my belated #WCW, posting from Vegas about Rachel Kushner who wrote about a woman named Reno. I loved this book especially the strong and female characters of Reno and Giddle trying to make it in the male dominated art world of 1970's New York. @BookishFeminist

"The man looked up at us. In his face I saw confusion and misery, and I understood that we had interrupted him. He'd been trying to kill himself. He looked up, helplessly alive, swaddled in his drenched clothes."

Feeling the need for speed this morning!

The writing is magic.