Bluets | 
panAmazing how exhausting less than a hundred pages can be. Feels like someone trying to journal through heartbreak/loss and unsuccessfully distract themselves with musing on the significance of a colour.
While blue has associations with sadness, depression, it almost feels like the author could have chosen any colour and meandered off into reflections and neat or disturbing trivia about it. 1/?
pickWhen reading Maggie Nelson, it‘s always good to have no expectations and just let the writing hum along, in this case in blue. I always enjoy her.
pickBlue does not have the same meaning to Maggie Nelson as it does to me. And yet, I still loved being drawn into this album of ruminations on the subject.
I was particularly drawn to her thoughts on heartache and desire.
My favourite passages are a bit too sexual for Litsy 😄
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An ode to blue, and a few more things too. Another interesting memoir form 💙
so-soSome of this worked for me, she can write a poetic sentence and thought. Some didn't. I can respect her thoughtfulness and reflection and recognize she's probably not the writer for me.
so-soI understand why so many people love this, and I really did like it, but it got too much for me at some point. I also feel like this should not be read as an ebook (I read this on Scribd on my phone) but as a paperback at the very least.
Months before this afternoon I had a dream, and in this dream an angel came and said: You must spend more time thinking about the divine, and less time imagining unbuttoning the prince of blue‘s pants at the Chelsea Hotel. But what if the prince of blue‘s unbuttoned pants are the divine, I pleaded. So be it, she said, and left me to sob with my face against the blue slate floor
pickFinished last night! It reads a bit like a diary of stray thoughts. Nelson reflects on her love for the color blue, the ending of a relationship and her ensuing depression, and a friend's struggle after a tragic accident. It felt both familiar and strange. Many times I put the book down to look up an unfamiliar word, a work of art, or some other thing I hadn't before heard of, which I enjoyed! Likely a reread.
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Somewhere between Pick and So-So.
This is one of those books you could return to, and, given your current circumstances or mood, discover something new both about yourself and the author's journey.
After the rough ride that was The Sport of Kings, I am really looking forward to this change of pace. (Yep, all the riding puns 😜) Poetry? Prose? Essays? What do YOU call Bluets?
Two blue books... The one on the right, Maggie Nelson's Bluets, I loved. The one on the left a gift from the lovely @merelybookish and one that I should read soon.
#trueblue #MOvember @Cinfhen
pickMy first and perhaps main takeaway from this book is that Maggie Nelson is a lot smarter than I am. What is this book? An essay, a prose poem, a collection of aphorisms, a philosophical treatise, a letter—yes. It is abstract and specific. It reaches toward universal truths but is intensely personal. It is high-minded and vulgar. It is intellectual and emotional. I‘m pretty sure it‘s over my head.
My #FebruaryTBR
I‘m a little ambitious this month too #LiteraryLove
“Mostly I have felt myself becoming a servant of sadness. I am still looking for the beauty in that.” - Maggie Nelson
*A photo of my best friend by me!
I went to an event yesterday where they talked about Du Bois and his importance for sociology. So off course I bought his book since they had that. And since they had Maggie Nelson‘s thoughts on blue, I had to have that as well.
Afterwards I saw the documentary “Matangi / Maya / M.I.A.” I wasn‘t aware off her, until a friend asked if I wanted to see this and the blurb really sold me on this. The documentary really lived up to my expectations.
so-soThere is some absolutely wonderful writing in this and some heart breaking themes. It‘s more of a it‘s me not you! I can see what people love, it just didn‘t touch me enough and left me feeling a bit unsatisfied.
It‘s a book you definitely have to make your own mind up about. The cover is still gorgeous.
Not quite sure what I think of the book yet, but there is some beautiful writing.
#litsymail
Thank you Jess, a lovely surprise 💕 and it looks so beautiful too. (No I haven‘t already got it!). Much appreciated.
I have two confessions: I don't know where the original image came from so cannot credit, and I am also guilty of this cardinal sin. I've never said this to a librarian/bookseller but I have said it to myself! #bluebooks #31bookpics @howjessreads
UPDATE: This may be the original post https://m.facebook.com/BlueWillowBooks/photos/our-blue-display/10152241142939882...
pickI wish I could write how Maggie Nelson writes. I may not have connected with this one quite as intensely as The Argonauts, but I still found it fascinating and beautiful.
Also interesting to read this after reading about Deleuze‘s philosophy. I feel like he would have liked this.
so-soOh, the pitfalls of anticipation!
There were indeed paragraphs that smacked me between my blue eyes but as a whole it didn't add up to the profound thing I expected it would be. Maybe it was the sensation of shuttling back and forth between sex and the cerebral. Maybe it's not her but me that hasn't a heart: anyway, here I am, the illustrated definition of "the feel of not to feel it".
(Thanks for that, Keats!)
Ouch! 😩
If love was a bird then you shot it down
the blood and the feathers they lay spread on the ground
(The Wonder Stuff, unless I am very much mistaken: my teens weren't ALL about Latin! 😉)
"If you are in love with blue you fill your pouch with stones good for sucking and head down to the river."
Bloody hell! I wish I could say I don't know what she's talking about here. The other side of this, though, is a remedy I discovered by intuition: swimming regularly in a blue pool (with the added side-effect that the smell of chlorine is now an anchor for feeling strong and calm!).
pickI found this on scribd and tore through it last night. The best way to describe this is as a beautiful tangent that is heartbreaking.
We start on the colour blue and go through emotions and thoughts on things such as the blues, blue movies, how we see it.
It's a hard book to describe but if like me you sometimes just let the writing flow through you not worrying about plot ect and like a poets voice then you will probably love this.
139. “Memory is blue in the head? Heads are easily taken off” (Lorine Niedecker).
I missed a poetry workshop because I didn‘t hear my alarm go off, so thought while it‘s on, I‘ll read a book. Just started Bluets, recommended to me by a poet who did some readings in my city a month ago.
Visual description: front cover of blue hardback splayed onto light brown/tan bedcover. The part of book visible has ‘Bluets‘ in a painted blue bubble, the author ‘Maggie Nelson‘ in capitals at the bottom.
Do you ever just slump into a rut of not taking care of yourself (which includes not reading) and you know what you need to do but you're still slumped? I was away from home and didn't have much access to the internet for about 2 days and during that time read Bluets. Yes, it's short, but still I felt really good about it. Also, related, my grandmother gave me this book that she used to read to her kindergarten students. 💙
I'm a little suspicious of the amount of this spare text that's actually (credited) quotations from other people.
There are pretty word pictures, but to a certain extent it's a deeply personal catharsis that means more/makes more sense to the writer than it ever will to the reader. 11mo
⚠️Suicidal ideation, depression, r slur 11mo