Welcome to Litsy!

I don't know why I waited so long to read this (I've had the ARC on my shelves since before its 2018 release date 🤦🏻‍♀️)...

Finished listening to this today as one of my books for the #24in48readathon. It was an interesting book that looked at the lives of a mother and daughter and the absent father‘s relationship with them. Really enjoyed the audiobook, not sure I would‘ve enjoyed the book as much of I had just read a physical copy.

📚Didn‘t realise she was a librarian...📚

https://bookmarks.reviews/a-private-investigator-turned-author-librarian-on-the-...

Really liked the industrial setting of this debut novel. The writing was really vivid and thoughtful, the characters complex, & reacting to life with both guts & a sense of desperation. Aliu deals with the immigrant experience, cultural misunderstanding & ethnic mistrust deftly. The political setting, both home & abroad gives the characters a real landscape to play out their domestic drama within. I'm not sure I was convinced by the rapid wrap up.

When you get home from being away - and there‘s laundry to do, post to sort, stuff to do - but really what‘s more important than catching up with my reading first! A girls gotta have priorities right?! #bookishproblems

Starting this today. Don‘t be fooled by the sun - I‘m in Finland and have Thermal everything on!

Decided to participate in this year‘s “Blind Date with a Book” at my local library 😬 Surprise! The novel “Brass” was unveiled! Let‘s see how this goes :) #February #LibraryPicks

Great writing, clever, honest and authentic. The story covers many themes but life is like that.

I loved this book about a teenage girl hoping for a better life, and then her daughter hoping for the same thing.

Elise a Lithuanian meets Bashkim, married man from Albania, while working as waitress in Diner in Waterbury Conn. daughter, Luljeta,dreams of Manhattan&NYU. However, Lulu is suspended and receives a rejection letter from NYU the same day, returns to Waterbury, very unhappy. Once home decides to learn history and past of her father.The wit, candor and spunk take this novel to the perfect level I loved it. Great story pace awesome humor.

I've been waiting for this to come in at the library....can't wait to start it!

This is why I always, always carry a book around with me. A few minutes waiting for my new glasses were not wasted. And I was happy to read a bit more of Brass, because it‘s amazing.

There are parts of this novel I love: the alternating point-of-view between the mother and daughter, their voices, and the character driven plot that dives into themes of immigrant life, the working class, and the relationship between mother and daughter.

As a writer/library student, I also love that this debut novel comes from Xhenet Aliu who is both a writer and an academic librarian.

1. We added this handsome cat to our fur baby family.
2. No. #providence or #boston
3. Mac n cheese!
4. Green
5. 16ish... This list really isn't my jam. It reminds me of high school. 😇

@MinDea #humpdaypost #catsoflitsy

1. My shower-loving tabby cat. I adore her, but she transforms into a mop each morning.
2. Altered Carbon.
3. White. Her name is Claudia.
4. Pasta salad.
5. The Carrying by Ada Limon. Due out in August!

#humpdaypost @MinDea

Book club tonight. I confess I did not read the book this time. Still, meeting with this group is always engaging. Based on their assessment of the book — that it was tragic — I think I‘ll skip it.

Thoroughly enjoyable. A refreshing read about the struggles of first and second generation American immigrants in working-class Connecticut. Beautifully written.

Also - the Amazon A3 box is THE perfect size for most cats. 😹

Slightly hard to read story about Lithuanian and Albanian immigrant families in Waterbury, CT. Luljeta and Elsie are compelling characters but hard to love. I enjoyed it, though, and picked it up at every opportunity.

That‘s some hard hate for DD. ☕️

A mother/daughter story told in alternating p.o.vs Mid 1990s, Elsie is 20 and trying to figure out life in rundown Waterbury, CT. Seventeen years later, Elsie's daughter Lillyetta wants to find her father.
Family bonds, working class USA, cross cultural relationships and single parenthood, a lot is covered in this novel. But it's all riding on the voices of Elsie and Lulu, and they fell short for me. What was meant as brassy rang tinny to my ear

This book was a slow burn for me. I‘d greedily snap up a few chapters then leave it alone for a day or two.

The book is alternately narrated by a mother recounting her daughter‘s early life story & her daughter seeking out a father she never knew after life-shaking rejection from NYU. Interestingly, the mother‘s chapters are in the first person & her daughter‘s are in the second.

Overall, a mild pick. I‘d definitely read her next book. 3.5⭐️

The excitement I felt when the badass, awesome aunt in this book is A PUBLIC LIBRARIAN made me squeal right out loud. It‘s how I want my nieces and nephews to think of me, but I‘ve misused slang and danced in front of them one too many times.

Next pick for my book group.

Brass features two young women‘s coming-of-age stories, one mother and one daughter each discovering her own place in the world. You can find out more about BRASS in @thereadingwomen‘s Q&A with Aliu, where she discusses some of her inspiration for the novel and the importance of featuring working-class characters.

https://www.readingwomenpodcast.com/blog/2018/02/23/qa-xhenet-aliu

NEW Q&A
Today on the blog we have a Q&A with Xhenet Aliu, author of BRASS. It's the story of a mother and daughter as they each come of age in small-town Connecticut. Both want to leave their hometown, but the trials of young adulthood make their dreams feel so much farther away. Aliu talked with us about her inspiration for her debut novel and the importance of featuring working-class Americans in contemporary literature.
https://t.co/nPdzeRLv6y

When you have to replace your library card because your wallet was stolen and your physical holds transfer but this is what Overdrive looks like. And then you get an email that a book was automatically checked out to you but you have no way to access. Sent in a “help me” but I really hope I have some good luck coming my way soon.

A book with two parallel stories of a mother daughter. The writing was beautiful, but the story was just ok.

I have heard such good things about this from multiple sources. Excited to start this.

I found it!! I thought I had lost my favorite #booksleeve, but it was in some luggage I finally got put away. Yayayay!!

Now to work on reading this great novel, which I‘m enjoying except for the jarring second person in Lulu‘s chapters. 👍🏻

Brass is sporting my other FunUsual Suspects sushi bookmark 🍣📚 Really enjoying this cross-cultural coming-of-age story so far!

There‘s a smiley face in the nori, but I couldn‘t quite capture it on film.

"It's not that ignorance has been bliss for you, really, but it's been okay. It's been a low-fat pound cake, not entirely satisfying but better than bread and water." P 14

After a whole zoo of being halfway thru the digital galley, having a problem with the file, the galley expiring, etc I have finally finished the last 70 pages of Brass. One of the few books to use a 2nd person POV narrator (Lulu) to good effect and in contrast to a 1st person POV (Elsie). It was very hard to predict how Aliu was going to wind up the narrative. Another knockout book from editor Andrea Walker at Random House.

Making my way through Zadie Smith‘s essay collection and the novel Brass

So I picked up a new release and two bargain books at B&N today!! 🎉💃🏻💃🏻🎉 Fortune is an old fav that I‘ve been looking for in hardback. Plus I get to try a new author, Aliu, (and an old fav, Quindlen). Good day!

I loved this book about a mother and daughter trying to work their way(s) up from the lower rungs of post-industrial Waterbury, CT.

Morning read.

Another of my recent audio books.

What I liked about this book was the way the author would alternate between the narrators. There is Elsie, who after graduating from high School has no choice but to take a third shift waitressing job working at an Albanian diner to the present time when her Daughter, Luljeta who is about to graduate High School and blames all of her short comings on her mom. It comes together when Elsie‘s past and Luljeta‘s present collide in an unexpected way.

One of life‘s little pleasures for me is the First Editions Club from Parnassus Books in Nashville. Every month I get an autographed, first-edition hardcover and most of their choices go on to be award winners and bestsellers. This month is Brass. Pretty cool to have Tom Hanks‘ autograph! 🖌📕⭐️

Finished!!!
#24in48
I read Brass, Winter, Summer of the Dead, Double Dog Dare, Legends ll: Shadows, Gods and Demons, Into The Water, The King of Bones and Ashes, much of What Happened and some of Wild Ride, The Miracle if Mindfulness and Cloudbound.

#ParnassusFirstEditionsClub Bookmail arrived today in time for #Femmuary reading!

The middle of this book felt very long though by the end I really liked it!

I love this book so hard!! 💕 Told in alternating chapters in POV of mother (in first person addressing daughter) and daughter (in second person. Yeah, I know! But it completely works here). Beautifully written and so much to say about class and choice and belonging and just living hard in the US. #netgalley

SWEEEEEEEET! Cleared my netgalley shelf at the end of 2017, and promptly requested tons of books from the Most Anticipated Books lists 😝

I love that folks at the publishing houses are busy approving lots of requests (and granting wishes) in the first week of the new year!

So excited for all of these titles! #netgalley

I really tried to like this but I found it a struggle, I just couldn‘t relate or connect to any of the characters or the plot. Well written but didn‘t hold my interest unfortunately.

Meet this lovely author at #siba17 and have been looking forward to starting her book!