Welcome to Litsy!

I recently joined a newly formed LGBTQ+ book club in South Carolina and today we found out this is the first book we‘re reading. It‘s my first ever in-person book club and I am hopeful that it will be a good experience.

#bookclub #lgbtq #southcarolina

My new favorite Baldwin book and probably going to stay in my top 10 reads of the year. This is about a man struggling with his sexuality and relationships as an American in Paris. It‘s heartbreaking and beautiful.

Again, possibly in my top 5 favorites of 2022. This book blew me away. Also, I need to come up with new superlatives. Anyway, I only regret not reading this sooner.

#12Booksof2022 @Andrew65

2022 has been a rather marvellous book year for me!

I've discovered new favourite authors. Unearthed book series that have become lifelong obsessions. And one cannot forget the stand-alones that have found a permanent home in my heart.

⬆️ These were my absolute favourites ⬆️

1: Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin.
2: Rainbow Milk by Paul Mendez.
3: Into This River I Drown by TJ Klune.

Have been reading this as a buddy read with my son and wow it was wonderful. Such beautiful prose, brilliantly written characters and a hard hitting story.
This one is definitely going into my all time favourites list
5 ⭐️

A short story brilliantly narrated. David‘s efforts to escape both the morality of his American upbringing and his own contradictory desires play out in the small and suffocating atmosphere of Giovanni‘s room. 8/10

#Alphabetgame #LetterG @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

Baldwin again. He had many sides - angry and brilliant and provocative - or here, beautiful and elegant. A favorite all-time for me.

Other G‘s: Goodbye to a River by John Graves (for rare tx sanity). The slow and thoughtful Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. And two audio surprises: The Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America-Stacy Schiff & The Greater Journey-David McCullough

📚 A few of my recent purchases 📚

Finally got around to reading James Baldwin. Really looking forward to exploring more of his writing.

Fascinating essay by Colm Toíbín, fyi @Graywacke
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v23/n18/colm-toibin/the-last-witness
https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2021/01/where-to-start-with-james-baldwin

With Giovanni‘s Room, I‘ve completed the 2021 #lgbtqbookbingo (begun this year after I finished the 2022 board…) @Kenyazero

For Pride month I picked this classic which I had never read. A moving examination of repression, internalized homophobia and the resulting consequences in 1950‘s Paris.

Another masterpiece. Just devastating

Everything I said about Greek tragedies giving me nightmares applies to this: it was my "bedtime book" & it was the stupidest choice; it wrecked my sleep. Though a slim novel, I dragged it out over 10 days. It's a hard book not because of its prose, which is beautiful, or its plot, which is straightforward, but because of what it contains: shame, rage, denial, anguish; the stuff that is the bedrock of toxic masculinity & (internalised) homophobia.

Sorry to break the rules. I neglected day9 #Pub of #SavvySettings because I couldn't think of anything -- then it hit me- Giovanni's Room - the book that established Baldwin's reputation as a great American writer overnight! While his classic Go Tell It On the Mountain. is another tough reckoning with #Church, Day21 Brilliant stylist. Powerful emotions. @Eggs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

" Somebody, your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour - and in the oddest places! - for the lack of it"
- James Baldwin

A tragic love story to rival Shakespeare's Romeo and Juilet.
James Baldwin has composed yet another masterpiece.
When David, a rudderless American, collides with Giovanni, a grief-stricken, vulnerable bartender hiding behind a vivacious bravado, they embark on a journey of love and lust and hate, until one really appreciates how closely all of those impassioned feelings are related.
The prose is a breath-taking feat of vehemence and observation.

This isn‘t a book about a man confused of his sexuality, this is a book about how self-hatred and self-loathing can destroy the lives of people around you. This is about a man who is selfish and who does not take accountability for his actions or have any consideration for the feelings of people around him.

A lot of people pity for David but he is the enemy.

Set in 1950s Paris, a gay man struggles with his sexuality while falling in love with another man. Even though he is engaged, David, while his fiancée is away on a trip meets a bartender, Giovanni, and continues their affair in Giovannis room until his fiancée returns. This book deals heavily with the mental struggle of accepting yourself as queer, especially at a time when gender roles were so heavily enforced.

#CC50_part2 #ClassicsClub #BookSpin

@TheAromaofBooks

And at moments like this I felt that we were merely enduring and committing the longer and lesser and more perpetual murder.
#ViensMEmbrasser #ComeandKissMe #HappyNatlPieDay

My life now consists of reading or thinking about the reading; tagged book is for Book Spin Bingo and OCF is for #Tob2022. I can keep multiple books going IF consumed via different media: eBook + print + audio (over halfway thru the Matrix). BY FAR the Baldwin is the most immediately captivating!! The Shteyngart begins with awful people.

Wanted a pic of my almost blooming Christmas Cactus

A brilliant, searing tale of the cumulative weight of shame, self loathing, and living a closeted life. A young American is living in Paris, trying to attain the life expected of him while wrestling mightily with his desires for men. When he enters into an affair with an Italian bartender, Giovanni, he finds himself at a crossroads. Suddenly, everything he has been running from comes rushing to confront him.

Book #22 of the year: “Giovanni‘s Room” by James Baldwin

I need to start reading some less painful books. The story centers on a white American man in Paris as he‘s forced to face his sexuality, his understanding of morality, and how deeply we hurt and are hurt by the people we love. It‘s very well written and I enjoyed it, but there is no happy ending.

#QuotsySep21 Day 27: #Crush

Although the writing style is beautiful, the actual story is lackluster.

would sell my soul to the devil himself to be able to write 1/8th as good as baldwin. phenomenal

A modern tragedy set in Paris in the 1950s, Baldwin has a clear premise without any pretense, delivering a good story. David has a fiancée but while she‘s traveling, he finds himself falling for Giovanni. We want love but also fear it, hurting others in the wake of our confusion...
#authoramonth2021 @Soubhiville
#bookspinbingo @TheAromaofBooks

Wonderful story. Still processing.

James Baldwin is brilliant here, and I‘m finding it hard to imagine banning this one for “promoting” anything, because for me it‘s about the power of society to alienate someone from their own feelings, their own choices, forcing them to make decisions they wouldn‘t otherwise, decisions they are heartsick over and can‘t possibly live with. Soul crushing decisions for the sake of society‘s acceptance. Plus those in power abusing those with none.

Good, but very sad. It was hard to read about the narrator not feeling that he could be his true self out in the open. Sad about Giovanni, too. Things are better today, although not yet perfectly so everywhere.
#authoramonth #authoramonth2021

Wonderfully written novel. The pain the characters feel and live drips from every page. Highly recommend

#MoviesInMay @Klou
Prompt: Denzil Washington
Movie: Philadelphia

Three different books, the same colors for the covers 🤣

#myreadings #redcovers #giovannisroom #thecrimsonpetalandthewhite #nightfilm #jamesbaldwin #michelfaber #marishapessl

There are so many ways of being despicable... But the way to really be despicable is to be contemptuous of other people‘s pain.

“You don‘t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you can never go back.”

This book was just a stunner, start to finish. Baldwin tells us from the beginning where we will end up, but that didn‘t stop me from being swept away in the amazing prose and the intense, all-encompassing story of David, Giovanni, and that room. I‘m not crazy about the way the lone female character, Hella, is portrayed but I can‘t bring myself to knock even half a star off. I had all of the feels.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

#1001books

A thought provoking story about a man‘s struggle to define his sexuality against conventional masculinity. Ashamed and confused, David travels to Paris to “find himself,” but ends up wrestling with two identities - an engaged man to a beautiful, elusive woman...and a lover to a Parisian man. Though wordy at times (despite being 160 pages!), Giovanni‘s Room‘s writing is poetic and tragic. This is a story about how denial can turn into self hatred.

So good! Pacy read, tragic story. Great for a bookclub.

Oh, my heart. This book. Gorgeous writing. The ending is devastating.

Considering when this was published, I think it is impressive what Baldwin tried to do. That being said, it didn‘t really do it for me. The first half was a bit boring, choppy and it felt like entire passages were cut away, because at times I didn‘t know how the story moved from a to b. The characters felt like charicatures (the melodramatic, the flat woman, the man in denial), and I couldn‘t care about any of them.

#BookSpinBingo #Space5

It is Pride in Denmark, so it felt like a great time to start this classic 🌈🌈

#currentlyreading

Stunning. Baldwin and Paris, what‘s not to adore. He writes about pain and desperation better than anyone. bravo😘

Exquisite storytelling with equally, if not more, exquisite prose made my first experience with James Baldwin an absolute pleasure. A timeless masterpiece that has aged gracefully in a manner books seldom do! #ReadBlackAuthors

It‘s so difficult to write about Baldwin‘s writing, because it‘s exquisite. This the story of a man coming to terms with his sexual identity, and how that struggle ripples outward. It‘s also the story of how difficult it is to be yourself when society deems you as “Other.” Beautifully rendered and heartbreaking.

Finished this a few days ago for a #pridemonth read. This is a powerful #lgbtq classic about an man who has an affair with another man while his fiancé is out of town in 1950s Paris and must decide between a life of stability with her or being with his true love. A powerful, sad novel that makes me want to pick up the rest of Baldwin‘s work soon.

Thanks for the tag, @batsy Strange how hard this is, going with some somewhat recent favorites.

1) Giovanni‘s Room by James Baldwin
2) Neapolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante
3) Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli

#favs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

Want to share @Liz_M ?

Book #15: This novel is noted as an early work of LGBTQ fiction, preceding Call Me By Your Name with a 1950s story of an American in Paris.

This book is brilliantly written. But goodness, so much internalized homophobia (or biphobia, I suppose, since the protagonist appears to be bi). But that appears to be very much the point.