Welcome to Litsy!

Here‘s another thing I‘ve been working on! I‘m almost done with the classes I‘ve been taking to become a Life-Cycle Celebrant, which will allow me to marry people with *extra* legitimacy.

If you‘ve been following me for a bit, you‘ve probably heard me talking about it. You may even know that my husband‘s a wedding photographer. I convinced him to let me add a tab to his website. 😉

If you‘re interested, it‘s here:
http://adamwaz.com/officiant

Just saying hi!
I‘ve been busy but I‘m still here.

In addition to my full-time Children‘s Librarian gig, I‘ve also been taking a weekly adult tap class, & I‘m getting certified to officiate weddings as a Life-Cycle Celebrant. It‘s all good but it‘s also pretty all-encompassing! Here‘s a photo from my most recent wedding (on the beach during Hurricane Ophelia 🌀).

Hope you‘re all well! 💖

Look its Spring! Im not sure why the flowers have already dropped on the ground though 🤷🏻‍♀️ its a very rainy spring so far!
We‘re in the heads of Mitchell, Madeleine and Leonard. Three academic young people coming of age in the 80s, figuring out themselves and their relationships. Mitchell is fixated on religion and Madeline, Madeline is fixated on 18th century novels and Leonard, and Leonard has a whole other source of worries.⬇️

Life News! ✨📣

Today, I found out I was accepted into a certification program to become a Life-Cycle Celebrant.

In addition to my Religious Studies degree, this means I‘ll be extra, super, WAY overqualified to marry people in 2024. 😅🥳

This is a photo of my youngest brother and sister-in-law sharing their first kiss on their wedding day. I‘m officiating in the background.

Lots of literary references, set in Brown in the 80s. A little bit of outdated chauvinism comes through the writing but I liked the characters coming of age in their own ways.

IT'S SUNNY TODAY!! After so many gloomy and rainy days, it's nice to see some sunshine. I'm currently sitting on the floor by our backdoor so that I can soak up all the sun since it's still so windy and bitterly cold.

#readKY #adultliterature #sunshine #marriage #winter #bright #fiction

The Marriage Plot follows 3 characters as they navigate life at Brown in 1982 and for a short time after they have graduated. I liked how varied their experiences were despite being in the same place and enjoyed reading this, but found it a bit forgettable.

I was drawn to this book as an English major who read a lot of stories that used “the marriage plot” as a device.

I wasn‘t getting what I thought I‘d get in the first half or more but then it really redeemed itself and met the threshold I thought it would.

It wraps up nicely a modernized analysis of the Marriage Plot and though sad, brilliantly demonstrates the reality of mental illness in a relationship.

Checking off my #bookspinbingo list

Where has Jeffrey Eugenides been all my life? I just finished reading The Marriage Plot, which is much much better than the name suggests. It follows the lives of three individuals, an English major, a Religious Studies major and a Biology major after they finish undergrad at Brown. I would say the writing style is very reminiscent of Meg Wolitzer or Lauren Groff. This is the perfect type of literary fiction I was craving this summer!

This earned a place among my favorites. I loved this book. A modern take on the love story. Maybe our first love should be ourselves? It was a ride, being on each character‘s journey of self-discovery. Leonard‘s depression was uncomfortably realistic. Leonard, Madeleine, Mitchell, even Alton and Phyllida...such wonderfully drawn, fleshed out, relatable characters. 162/1,001 #1001Books

I bought this book when it first came out but all of the negative reviews kept me from picking it up. I finally took it off of my shelves, fully expecting this to be a hate read, and ended up really liking it. Yes it is about pretentious twenty-somethings who are not always sympathetic characters but I was very much a pretentious twenty-something at one point and could really relate to their confusion about actual relationships and the real world.

Finishing up my third Eugenedies novel. His books are so unique.

Interesting

Good ending

So my local used bookstore was having an inventory clearance of their basement sale items. Every book in the basement was a dollar!

Here‘s what I found:
1. The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
2. What is Stephen Harper Reading by Yann Martel
3. Four Souls by Louise Erdrich
4. Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman

Has anyone read any of these books or heard the hype around them? If so, what did you think?

#BookHaul #ShopUsed #BuyLocal

I liked this book way more than I thought I would.

Thank you, @OrangeMooseReads for sending me The Marriage Plot! I have been wanting to read this for years. You are so generous! :)

12-31-18: My 69th and final book of 2018! Couldn‘t put it down! 👍🏼📖#️⃣6️⃣9️⃣

The first time I‘ve read Eugenides and perhaps not representative. The initial premise, a college love triangle, felt expected and predictable. The depth of literary, historical and philosophical context kept me interested but these ideas felt too detached from the plot. The exploration of Leonard‘s world was a particular highlight. Reinterpreting the marriage plot is an intriguing basis but it wasn‘t entirely successful. 3/10

The only positive thing about this photo is the cold beer I just opened. What a pile of pretentiousness. Unlikeable people, spouting philosophy and semiotics in college, then trying to find happiness in young adulthood. Add religion, mental illness, the main remain character written as beautiful and not much more, topped off with a dose of 1980s pessimism and emptiness. Ugh! I‘ve loved Eugenides in the past and just hated this book.

Jeffrey Eugenides is always my jam. Stayed up late starting this and eager to get back to it today.

#Austen #James #Endings

#saturdaynight #
Finished my bookclub book. Ended up changing my mind & am glad I read it. Much to think about. On my way out with my lifelong dear friend you surprised me & is here from DC. 🎉🎉

#afternooncoffee #newcamera #bookclub
Have a new camera in my phone! It produced fuzzy and wobbly pictures so went to Apple today.
In a rather dark Starbucks, reading. Not sure I like this book, but reading on as it is a book club pick.

#bookclub #Septemberpick
My bookclub does not meet in summer.So the member whose job in June was to bring her book recommendations, suggested we pair the tagged book with The Age of Innocence. I just finished Wharton last night & opened The Marriage Plot to this quote. These lines of the Talking Heads song, Once in a Lifetime, perfectly and succinctly describe Newland Archer‘s marriage to the ethereal beauty, May Welland in The Age of Innocence.

Starting this book. A nice break from they mystery genre I've found myself favoring.
*Edit: I love his writing. But this book made me so frustrated. I loved the themes and questions it proposed, but the Virgin Suicides is still my favorite by him.

First, I hope everyone is having a fun and/or relaxing weekend! It‘s beautiful here in Arkansas, but it‘s too hot to read outside so I will look up from my book now and then to appreciate the trees, sky, & wildlife.

So! I had never heard of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh until I watched that docuseries on Netflix: Wild, Wild Country.
And now he just appeared on page 299 of the tagged book I‘m reading!

Don‘t you love when that happens?????

In The Marriage Plot, Madeleine gives Mitchell the #coldshoulder . Their friendship is on her terms, and she only gives him the time of day, when she wants someone to make her feel better. I'm being a bit harsh to Madeleine, who was the only person I actually liked in this insufferable book. I really wanted to like this Jeffery Eugenides' novel, but it didn't hold my interest. The first half was the best part.

#AdelesMayMashup @vkois88

5* This is one of those books that I am kicking myself for not reading sooner. Like 7 years ago! But that‘s the wonderful thing about books: they wait for us. While we grow and change, they don‘t. I enjoyed this book immensely. I related to it. And was stunned at the end. They are so young. ❤️

I love Eugenides for his realistic, flawed, and incredibly human characters.
I hate him for his stereotypical, pitying, and incredibly trite portrayal of mental illness.
We already have the story of the destructive, angry, and volatile bipolar person. That may be a truth, but it is only one truth. While I love the 3 dimensional characters in The Marriage Plot, I think that Eugenides's depiction of bipolar disorder is overall quite harmful.

"Phyllida's hair was where her power resided. It was expensively set into a smooth dome, like a band shell for the presentation of that long-running act, her face."

#Face #QuotsyMar18 @TK-421

This is actually a re read for me, ready for book club next week.
I'm remembering how much I enjoyed it first time round :). I feel for all three characters, whilst also becoming frustrated by their selfishness and egos! The joys of youth; )

It was great, but I‘m not sure why.

Eugenides won my heart with The Virgin Suicides, so of course I read this one when it came out years ago. As a book nerd who was at the time an English Lit student obsessed with 19th century literature, I loved it a lot. I was going through my last year of undergraduate, so I could relate to the characters and situations a lot. Eugenides is great at portraying humanity and this book, more traditional than his first ones, proves it once again.

Disappointment

#quotsydec17 #desire

Sometimes... 😵😵😵

I just had the most wonderful time listening to this man speak. Jeffrey Eugenides (besides wearing this gorgeous, velvety suit) was so thoughtful and deliberate and I really could have listened to him go all night. Surprisingly, my favorite novel of his (and the one that ignited my love of fiction after college and struck a chord with my own experiences) was discussed quite a bit and I sank into a grateful kind of bliss while revisiting it 😍.

Mini book haul yesterday. Went thrifting with my mom.

"The solitude was extreme because it wasn‘t physical. It was extreme because you felt it while in the company of the person you loved. It was extreme because it was in your head, that most solitary of places."

This novel about manic depressed Leonard and his girlfriend Madeleine is heartbreaking. They love eachother but often can't reach one another.
#ModernLove #SeptemBowie

(Picture: The New Yorker)

Final selections from yesterday's trip to the used bookstore 😀 #backlist

Enjoyed a wonderful evening with these real live Littens! I haven't been able to talk books this seriously with any friends, so it was so fun sharing our book loves and hates in our favorite environment--a bookstore! @swishandflick @CoffeeCatsBooks @mrozzz #nycmeetup #litsymeetup #housingworks

Thanks @shawnmooney for letting me know about the Kinokuniya by Takashima in Shinjuku 👍 babe and I hit up the summer sale this week 😍 and, you're right, they do have a decent comics section too 😀 gahh, i could dig through boxes of books forever! Or until the toddler starts wailing 😭 #mommyreads #booksale so much #tbr

@BookishBlonde12 I saw your post about "Books & Bloody's" & felt compelled to share my love for those things, too.

Here's my husband on our wedding day, rushing to bring me a Bloody Mary... which I proceeded to drink while wearing my white wedding dress. Talk about tempting fate! Instead of your typical "beef or chicken" fare, we had "Breakfast for Dinner," complete with boozy coffee beverages, mimosas, and - of course - Bloody Mary's. ????

I liked this Eugenides a lot.
It is a page turner about Madeline and the two men in her life. All three characters are worked out really well, as a reader I can feel who they are, why they act the way they do and how they interact with eachother.
It is an hommage to the Victorian novel with its marriage plot, set in the 80s. Quite original and sharp. I could copy lots of great quotes here but I won't. Just read it! #1001books

A delicious Sicilian pizza while I finished my book. This one was a #slowburn for me, but then it was very enjoyable. Quite possibly my favorite Jeffrey Eugenides novel, or at least tied with Middlesex. 😍 Now I need to figure out what to read next. 😕 #postbookslump #readandeat

Such a great book set in the 1980's. Loved that there are so many great novels mentioned throught the story. "A grand romance in the Austen tradition."―USA Today Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, prenups, and divorce?

Entertaining level: ???? #book #leitora #reading #instabook #instabooks #litsy #booklover #2013

The characters in this novel had very few redeeming features. I had to work really hard to empathise with their feelings and situations. Ack!
Amongst the shallow characters, Eugenides sprinkled beautiful paragraphs and details which made the story believable and the people come to life. His references to literature and academics did become tiresome but brought home the point that 'smart' people can be very, very stupid.