Welcome to Litsy!

I usually love essay collections, but this one is reading as mundane in a non-compelling way to me. Apparently, my answer to the titular question is no.

With a poet‘s quiet flair, these award-winning essays meander from personal relationships to body image to living a creative life. Ashleigh Young grew up in a small town in New Zealand, nurturing her rich imagination and paying close attention to people around her. I enjoyed viewing the world through her windows. #newzealand

Don‘t count on anyone else to remember anything; they‘ll remember it wrong or they‘ll remember it mercilessly. She must write it all down before it‘s too late. She doesn‘t need to use a pseudonym but might consider changing some names here and there.

I‘ve come to yoga without any knowledge of its philosophy. I have only a desire to free myself from an awkwardness that I experience as something continually toppling and rebuilding itself deep inside me, and from the stark loathing of my body I‘ve felt as long as I can remember; it encases me as seamlessly as my skin.
(Author photo: Russell Kleyn)

“Can you tolerate this?” he asks. You try to nod. You hadn‘t known that vertebrae could reach so far up, right to the back of the brain.
“Oh yes. The vertebrae go all the way up to the head, like a ladder. Humans are really just highly evolved ladders.”
[a visit to the chiropractor]

An artist has set up an online store that specializes in dolls of travelling freak show exhibits. The Julia doll is made from leather with little hairs painstakingly sewed into it “for a more realistically hairy effect.”
(Image of Julia Pastrana from Internet)

If the bearded lady Jennifer Miller could see me now, she would put her strong, veined hands on my shoulders and give me a shake. “Listen to me. Hair is power! That‘s why men don‘t want women to have too much of it.”
(Image: Tognina by Lavinia Fontana)

I leaned my bike against the fence and put its special bicycle raincoat on, which is always more difficult than I think it will be, like putting a pair of pants on a car.

The marae embodies the Māori proverb: He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata!
(What is the most important thing in the world? It is the people, it is the people, it is the people!)

I was wearing brown flares and a blue-and-pink-flowered shirt from the Hamilton Salvation Army. I felt good. Fashion from the seventies was reckless and daring, but also clever, and I believed that these qualities were somehow transferred to me when I wore the clothes.
(Internet photo)

There was a particular set of statements the volunteer tour guides would repeat; these were deep within the narrative of the house. “She was ahead of her time.” “A radical in many ways.” “Very stylish.” “A truly modern woman who cast off convention.” And sometimes, conspiratorially, “She was very likely a lesbian.” #LGBT #NewZealand
(Internet photo)

It seems to me that the realest reality lives somewhere beyond the edge of human vision.
—Russell Hoban

His story has been fashioned as a beacon for others, especially for the plodders among us: he not only achieved something extraordinary, but did so as a simple postman who ignored the mocking of his neighbours.

This was almost a so-so for me. This is a collection of miscellaneous stories from the authors childhood and adulthood. I enjoyed the earlier stories but some of them were about topics or events that I didn't connect with. I picked this up because she's a New Zealand author and I saw it in a bookshop when I was there 😎

"Every week she looks forward to Sunday afternoon because that is when the man will go for a long ride on his bicycle. She will have the house to herself then, and she will be able to work. Nobody will creep up on her, nobody will call out to her, nobody will want to read aloud to her passages from a book or a newspaper article." Wow, do I identify with this!

I think this is my favorite cover of the year so far

Afternoon reading: Rebecca sold the hell out of this on this week‘s episode of All the Books! And it‘s out now! 🧡💗💚