Welcome to Litsy!

#AboutABook Day 27: #SetOnIsland - The narrative is captivating and the multiple perspectives used to give voice to the many characters. The racism in the novel was as thick as the jam that the white woman Queenie served to her Black lover in bed – it is White supremacy at its finest. My full review: https://wp.me/pDlzr-pHC

#IdiomInsight Day 21: There is literally a #PieceOfCake alongside this novel I started reading four months ago and just finished reading early this week. I feel a sense of accomplishment! Review is forthcoming this Saturday. 💕Part of my #DecolonizeReading2023 list. 📚📚📚

#BookBinge Day 20: This one definitely has #ImmigrantMC - part of the #DecolonizeReading2023 list, I haven‘t gotten back to it in months - will have to do it justice and finish reading it soonest.

#MayMontage Day 18: one of the protagonist‘s name here is Queenie, thus #Queen. Paired with Nando‘s kunafa cheese cake (may be available only here in this part of the world) and watermelon mocktail. 💕

Uh-oh! I stuffed up! 🤣 I thought you had to read your #titlesandtunes book by the 1st of May! This book was outstanding! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I loved that it was a different take on the Second World War from England, Jamaica, India and America. Levy writes beautifully highlighting the best and worst of humanity.
My song choice is Dreadlock holiday by 10cc.
#Islandvibes

#JulyJam Day 5: These book titles are giving me #BikiniDay vibes. Recent book haul - all part of our #DecolonizeBookshelves2022 reading theme.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

One of the newest acquisitions of the British Library is the first draft of the tagged. The whole book is hand written with so many notes, annotations that it‘s an amazing insight into her thought process. Amazing!

This is my first book that features the Windrush Generation and it was uncomfortable on many levels. There is so much i didn't know about Windrush but what really got me was much much loyalty the Jamaicans had to the British whereas the British had no idea where Jamaica was. The motherland called, they volunteered their lives to help. Then after we shoved their help back in their faces.

These characters will stay with me, its so impacting.

Day 7: Gilbert Joseph #migrates to the UK from Jamaica.

#maycharacters @Eggs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

Should‘ve worked for me far better than it did, sadly. I appreciate the topics it takes on & was interested in learning about this time & place, but neither the writing style nor characters clicked w/me, & in a literary character-focused book, that‘s an issue. Writing was lovely at times, opaque & off-putting at others. I had sympathy for the characters but also found them aggravating. Not a bad book, just not a for-me book, unfortunately. 2/5 ⭐️

The last book I need to read to complete this year‘s Reading Women challenge. I‘m not going to do their 2021 challenge because I had some issues with some of the prompts, but it was fun doing it this year. Don‘t know much about this book but the premise sounds interesting and it won the Women‘s Prize (previously the Orange Prize). #NowReading

#ifyoulikethis #whiteteeth
This was such a beautiful book, and National Theatre's production of the play version was spectacular. I found this much better written than White Teeth!

Tonight's home theatre experience

Such good writing

Last night we watched the National Theatre production of Small Island, at home. It was so good. There‘s a National Theatre production shown each week on YouTube; I think this one is available until 25 June. To have this access to theatre we wouldn‘t normally have is so good 📷 National Theatre

Reading this book to go along with National Theatre's broadcast of 'Small Island'.
#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

Fun times rearranging new shelves and decorative bits and pieces.

This book is wonderful AND it made me absolutely livid with rage in some parts - requiring me to put it down for a day or two. Four people‘s paths cross in post war London and we get each of their back stories. Hortense and Gilbert‘s stories were my favourites - their lives in Jamaica, their experiences as immigrants in 1940s London - especially Gilbert‘s experiences as a black RAF man encountering GIs from the Southern USA - mind blowing stuff ⬇️

Four people living in a London house in the 1940‘s - two black, two white - this tells their stories. Gilbert and his new wife Hortense who travel to England from Jamaica, both full of hope for their future. Queenie their landlady, who has never really found her place, and uptight, racist Bernard who is struggling to deal with changes to the order of things. This book was just brilliant; funny, honest and desperately sad.

The British Library acquires the Andrea Levy archive - so pleased for this news....
IMAGE: The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/06/andrea-levy-literary-archive-acqui...

Another WWII novel, sneaking in under the cover of a postwar novel... entertaining and heartbreaking and interesting. Definitely a “would recommend”.

Thanks for the birthday prezzie @kathedron !
This book is massive! Fingers crossed I get some time to read it!

#7days7covers #covercrush Day 6

@thegirlwiththelibrarybag would you like to play? Post a favourite cover every day for 7 days, no explanation, and tag someone else. No pressure to join in though!

#MayMovieMagic #ImmigrantSong two that I read very recently.... both beautiful & memorable books 👍🏻♥️💔

Very well written with rich characters. Set mostly in London during WW2 and the post-war period, the novel follows two couples - one Jamaican, and one British, sharing a home. Themes of betrayal, secrets, race relations, and the nature of war. For whatever reason, I just never got into the book. It took me over a month to finish, with long gaps in between. I see why people like it, it just wasn't for me.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
#Booked2019
#GiftedToMe by lovely Littens , Katie & Helen ♥️Thankyou . I laughed & cried. Set in the 1940‘s England during & after the war. The experience of the Jamaicans in the mother country. The characters drawn so real to life they often made me smile deeply at their intimate moments, their grace , dignity. A warm & touching story of 5 people whose lives came together at this time ..& what an unexpected ending

This book became “ book -interrupted “ ... because of IRL Bookclub book deadlines & other notions ..
I‘m halfway & my plan is to finish this week. I love this book ♥️

I‘m on a serious go-slow with the reading.. I‘m very busy with work & Granddaughter minding ... & too tired 😴 to even read at the end of day.
BUT , loving this one & the characters.. so all going ahead with the reading ... just slower than usual ( i. e. Snails pace 🙄....

Sorted !! The book ! The wine ! I can‘t stop reading .. this is my kind of perfect book , the story , the characters, the history , the colonies ♥️💔

#Booked2019 #BookGiftedToYou I‘ve been dying to start this one .... here it goes .. I have a feeling I‘m going to love it 👍🏻♥️

Katie ! Thankyou my pet ! Lovely books .. I‘ll be starting Small Island later today .. can‘t wait. And it will be my #booked2019 gifted to you book ♥️👍🏻

Kate , Thankyou I do love S Waters .. and the S Baume looks very inviting... thanks so much #jbuk Thank Kate 😘

I read this one very recently, a sad, frustrating, but also funny novel focusing on the Windrush generation...

#immigrantsong
#MarchIntoThe70s

I‘m book shopping ... I‘ve narrowed it down to these 4 .... I‘d better go home before I get carried away ... 😍😍😍😍

#MARCHINTOTHE70‘S
@LizPixie
@Cinfhen

Today‘s Prompt: London Calling

Small Island begins with a chapter about Post-War London and Hortense, a Jamaican bride, arriving in London to meet her husband whom she married but hasn't seen for six months. The reunion is quite a tale.

The gorgeous cover gives you a hint of what‘s inside.

Review here: https://bit.ly/2IOuQvj

The definitive novel of the Windrush Generation, this wonderful novel tells a story of racial and class prejudice with a warmth and understanding which encompasses even the snob and the racist. Yet somehow it's never dull or sermonising. Unforgettable characters and frequently hilarious.

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭📚📖

RIP Andrea Levy

I read Small Island last year and thought it was such an important book for Britain to be reading and discussing right now, it made me grateful and a little comforted to have Small Island there to help us understand and relate to each other. I don‘t know if we‘ve ever needed books like that more than now, and I‘m very thankful for everything Andrea Levy gave us.

Small Island has four narrators, two white Brits and two Jamaican immigrants to England. It slides through time, gradually revealing more about each character. Gilbert, one of the Jamaican characters, is very funny, but the narrative isn't as gripping as it could be.

I really don‘t like books about the Second World War, but all the ones that do exist should be just like this. I loved how you saw the far reaching impacts of the war on all different people, and white male soldiers weren‘t the only story we saw. I just didn‘t want it to end, definitely gonna read more by this writer.

Don‘t have any more Booker books on audible so on to this one - it‘s big and chunky and historical and just what I‘m in the mood for. Loving it so far!

The last day of #readingwomenmonth and #diversespines and both have the prompt #tbr. I recently joined my libraries bookclub and I picked this one out last month for us to read in July.
It's about the Caribbean immigrant experience in the uk and I think it's a particularly good choice considering just how disgusting my government has been to the windrush generation recently.
I've loved these challenges and everyone's recommendations!

#HeyJune
@GypsyKat
@Cinfen

GET BACK

“Just as the book BEGINS, it ENDS with Hortense's story. Hortense became my favorite character as you got to know her better.

Andrea Levy is an excellent author and storyteller.

I really enjoyed the content even though I was confused at times.....4/5 for interest, but 5/5 for the historical aspect and explanation of the Post-War Era in London.”

https://silversolara.blogspot.com/2010/07/small-island.html

Along with books, I also love learning about the world through travel (and also through reading!) just a few books and magnets to symbolize places I've gone to or that I would like to visit. #12daysofbookstagram Day 5: #morethanbooks @annebogel

#riotgrams #blackwriters

Really enjoyed this exploration of the Caribbean immigrant experience in post war Btitain

I‘m reading my way through Rory Gilmore‘s challenge. This has been one of my favorites and I also enjoyed the BBC adaptation. #TopAces #RoryGilmoresReadingChallenge

My neighbor gave me this because English isn't her first language and she was struggling with the dialect. I know absolutely nothing about it. I like starting a book that way. Zero expectations!