Welcome to Litsy!

An interesting and complex read, several lives interweaving under one shared fate.

Recent acquisitions:

📖 The Owl Service by Alan Gardner (recommended by Robert Macfarlane & @Bookwomble)
📖 Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans

Decided to revisit this book before I read Treacle Man which was short listed for the Booker last year.
This edition made interesting for me with a postscript by the author. I also watched a bit of the 1969 tv series which the author wrote and was filmed in the valley he based his book on. I enjoyed reading this book again.

Archie tends to sit on the edge of a bookshelf, keeping an eye on things, but I thought I'd get him down and light him up for a bit of company while I read 🦉🕯️📖

Unpopular opinion-Story started so interesting about hearing things in the attic, magic appears in some objects around the house and how an old story, a rumor, reappeared, became alive to these characters in this place. But it was confused in some parts, irrelevant dialogue in other parts😳 3⭐️But I like the cover☺️

I really had to service this owl! (I crave forgiveness for the awful pun!) A 1000-piece Christmas jigsaw which, as the pieces are deceptively similar, I've only just finished. The art work is by Angela Harding 🦉

Meant to post this days ago 🙈🙈🙈 I really enjoyed this one! Kind of a dark fairytale/folktale feel to it. A little mysterious, a little creepy, definitely worth the read if you‘re into this kind of thing.

Wow! I thoroughly enjoyed this, although I‘m not too sure what just happened. And ‘Cold Kippers‘ may be my new answer to anything I really don‘t want to face. And the audio was gorgeous.

Based on the Mabinogion legend of Blodeuwedd, this 1960s retelling weaves in issues of social class & Welsh language prejudice in rural Wales. Completely weird and quite creepy.

Not sure why this was never on my radar - thanks @Centique 🦉

I loved this. It‘s a kids book, but also an enjoyable couple of hours as an adult read. Just the right amount of spooky for me so this could be a good Halloween read. The characters are the stars here, and their changes and interactions drive the narrative more than a propulsive plot. Events are less neatly explained than usual for a children‘s book which is part of its delight. Do we really know what is happening? ⬇️

3 stars

Being pagan I have heard the story of Blodeuwedd through story and song so many times, it was interesting to hear the story woven through this book. I enjoyed reading this children‘s book, it‘s been on my list for so very long.

New ebook to start tomorrow! I have wanted to read this one since I was a kid.

This older (1960s) #ya retelling of a Welsh story from the Mabinogion didn‘t quite work for me. The writing style and unsettling story reminded me of Diana Wynne Jones‘s Fire and Hemlock, which I found similarly hard to appreciate as an adult reader. I‘m beginning to think I just don‘t respond well to too much ambiguity in my folk tale retellings 🤷‍♀️ oh well! #socialdistancereading book one down!

Genre: Horror fiction, Young adult fiction, Fantasy Fiction, Occult Fiction

Book title: Wishtree

Author: Katherine Applegate

started: december 9, 2019

finished:

why i chose the book: I'm into horror and fantasy stuff. i also like owls. :P

1. 📖 Tagged. This book scared the crap out of me when I was a kid, so weird and eerie.
2. 🎥 The Owl and The Pussycat (1970)
3. 🎶 Night Owl - James Taylor

#manicmonday @joscho

My YA book club voted this one of their favourite novels out of the hundreds we‘ve read. The group actually read it before 2003, which is when I joined, and I‘ve only this year got around to reading it. Now, I understand their love and admiration for this haunting and compelling novel that brilliantly explores personal relationships and societal structure in the UK. Eerie touches of myth and magic in an atmospheric, realistic setting.

Gwyn: That‘s the all-year-round cultural pursuit in your family. Not Upsetting Mummy.
Alison: Don‘t talk like that.
Gwyn: You‘re not having much luck with it, though, are you? Mummy was upset yesterday, and Mummy was upset the day before, and I bet you anything Mummy will be upset today. I wonder what pleasures tomorrow will bring.
(Internet image)

The actual plate that inspired Alan Garner to write The Owl Service is on display at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Can you see how the two parts of a stylized owl can be pieced together from the design?

Is it a children‘s book? Of course it is, and of course it‘s not only for children. Nowadays, I‘m very glad to say, children‘s literature is taken seriously by academe, and not dismissed as trivial. The Owl Service is one of the books that made that possible and necessary. 50 years after it was first published, we can see that it was always a classic.
(From the introduction by Philip Pullman, 2017)

Eek! This 1967 children‘s classic, based on Welsh mythology, is bizarrely creepy from the get-go and I‘m loving it.

🦉🦉🦉

Garner doesn‘t believe in context or warning up his audience: The Owl Service is unnerving from the first page and outright terrifying in places - all atmosphere and spiky characters and brooding secrets. Its only flaw is its abrupt ending; like The Moon of Gomrath, it just stops, leaving me with questions and a mild dissatisfaction. It‘s still awfully good.

#lastday #TampaVacation #LeMeridian #NationalHistoricSite #FederalCourtHouse1902 #LMBPC

Last breakfast in Tampa. Restaurant at hotel all dark wood so photo on dark side.This book makes me want to learn more about Welch myth,folklore, ancient culture.Somewhat ominous,at times sinister tone.Other times natural world takes over. Other world mystery.

#LMBPC #groupG #Round2
Sorry to my group- life interfered with my reading much of spring. Catching up with this book in Tampa. Wonderful Wedding is over, staying another day in the city. @bookish_wookish Will be mailing your book Tuesday when I return. Again, apologias for the delay.

Alan Garner's coming-of-age story brilliantly interweaves with Celtic mythology to create a tense, atmospheric modern fairy tale
#4newfavsin4days #4newfavesin4days @cinfen

So this is on the cover of the book I just picked up from the library. I just love old books, circa 1968 💟💓💟💓

Truth.

Soon-to-be 3-year-olds definitely do not leave enough of the time

Isn‘t it interesting how some books can completely bypass you? I somehow never heard of this author or book (published in 1967) until recently, when I was browsing the Libby app and looking for library ebooks to read to my kids. I have to admit that the lovely cover did attract me to it, as did the foreword by Philip Pullman.
Reading it with a slice of homemade walnut-coconut bread, some Brie and Yorkshire Gold with milk.

@merelybookish I received my package with our next #LMPBC book in it. The Owl Service looks interesting. Thank you for the chocolate and All The Birds in The Sky. I haven't read it yet but I have wanted to. I'm also looking forward to reading everyone's comments on The River At Night 😸
@kspenmoll @bookish_wookish

I read this years ago, and it stayed with me because it was surprising to me at the time: it was the same as an adult book in theme and style. (Read YA as well as sharing my Dad‘s library books.) Tragedy, tension, violence and regret of the eternal triangle doomed to loop repeatedly based on Welsh legend played out again with teenagers. Beautifully simple and evocative language.

This pretty came in the mail today. My pick for #letterO in #LitsyClassicsAtoZ. 🦉🦉
@Sarah83

Easily one of the strangest books I‘ve ever read. Being Welsh, I loved the links to the Mabinogion but felt there was a lot of confusion, particularly during scenes which included dialogue between the three main characters. The last two chapters were incredible, really intense. It‘s a well woven mystery, a little muddled in places but utterly enchanting.

A really subtle and sophisticated piece of YA. Inspired by the Welsh legend of Blodeuwedd it is told in beautifully jagged prose and has much to say about prejudice and adolescence, rivalry and cruelty. Garner refuses to spell everything out, crafting unease, uncertainty and frustration in his readers that places them right in the minds of his characters. I once wrote a Tolkien-esque verse version of this myth, it was interesting to revisit it

Just learned about the 50th anniversary edition of this strange, beautiful, haunting book. With a foreword by Philip Pullman! Want! NEED 😍

I'm so glad I read this book. Haunted and sad, powerful, mystic, beautiful. Lovely language and a page turner of a plot. The present becoming the past, but existing in the same moment, all at once. If you like Neil Gaiman and Phillip Pullman, I hope you'll love this. A classic, and one I hope to reread soon.

Ready to unwind with a drink and hopefully finish this amazing YA read celebrating 50 years! I am about halfway through the book and it is bananapants.

One day, I'll have the silver figure 8 finger splint of my dreams but for now I have a finger wetsuit... #isthisthereallife

One of my favourite books that uses the isolated, rural setting of Wales as its own character. Based on the myth of Blodeuwedd from the Mabinogion, this book conjures up the dark forces that can haunt a place and its people through generations. The characters are peculiar and unlikeable and driven to behave in odd ways because of this. This book always leaves me with the most delicious sense of unease. #ruralsetting #AprilBookShowers

The characters were bi-polar a lot of the time. One minute they'd be happy chatting to each other, and then they'd be arguing or fighting and hating each other. A lot of the time none of the characters liked each other at all. I could hardly keep up with their emotions they changed so fast. I also didn't feel like I got to know them very well. I wanted to know their fears and dreams, and I felt I only got a snippet of that.