Welcome to Litsy!

I am posting one book per day from my extensive to-be-read collection. No description and providing no reason for wanting to read it, I just do. Some will be old, some will be new. Don‘t judge me - I have a lot of books. Join in if you want!

#ABookADay2023

Medieval detective story. John Reve, village priest, tries to keep a foundering community together following the death of the richest man in town. Circular structure, reverse chronology. Lyrical, evocative prose. So many SMELLS. Isolation, faith, secrets, superstition, confession, seasons, nature, grief. A bit heavy/ponderous, but got its hooks in me. Light snark in narrator adds humor. Who wants the bridge to the wider world, who resists? 2018

The dean was right, today was weighing day, that undignified annual ceremony in which I was put in a boat along with another man to see that I weighed less than him, for a priest‘s substance is, it‘s claimed, midway between man and angel.

(The novel is set in England 1491. Does anyone know if this is true? I doesn‘t quite fit with what I‘ve learned about the church from that era.)

Tomorrow was Shrove Tuesday, carnival, carne levare: farewell to the flesh.

(A picture found online of the carnival in Venice)

I liked most of this book but after a bit the backwards storytelling grated on me and the genial priest who was our narrator began to seem a little less genial and a little less moral. This still would have been fine but there were too many unanswered questions at the end so I was left unsatisfied.

Difficult to know who I can recommend to read a historical literary mystery about a fifteenth century village cleric which is extremely clever and told backwards. I know! This is one for you @batsy 😂 I really enjoyed this. It‘s very hard to describe, you‘re following Reve John around the village, painstakingly performing his duties and looking after his flock, worrying about the sick ⬇️

I really enjoyed the audio version of this novel because the narrator reads it as of he‘s confessing the story to me. He has a very natural conversational tone.

The mystery surrounding the death of a villager unfolds in a nonlinear fashion and the pacing is admittedly slow, but that wasn‘t a problem because the intimacy of the characters kept me interested. It‘s a quiet and contemplative story about guilt and spiritual redemption.

Audio baking! Have I mentioned this narrator?! Yes I have - it‘s like he‘s living the character and relaying his thoughts to me in real time.

Breaking in my new pottery with pumpkin bread. Hoping it pops out easily. 🤞🏾

Next audio book - just 30 minutes in and enjoying it. Once again, terrific narrator. They make all the difference.

On the surface a historical crime novel set in a fifteenth century Somerset village with an unusual, backwards running narrative structure which is also a meditation on religion, sin, and personal responsibility. Some readers have pointed out historical inaccuracies but overall I found it both believable and compelling.

#BookReport 17/20

I read these three books (and loved The Glass Hotel) according to plan.
I found my reading mojo again, fortunately. I‘d love to read less though and socialize instead but for now it‘s okay to stay at home. I‘m not bored yet!

A slow pacing hysterical mystery, centered around a medieval community of which one member drowns. Was it murder or accident? A dean from a nearby town comes to investigate. The local priest has to take confessions from the people to hear what they know. Interesting, but a bit too slow for my taste.

This starts as a mystery, changes into a slow character study, and then revs back into a mystery with an unexpected answer to “whodunnit.“ There is a tiny English village in the late 1400s. Their wealthiest landowner drowns. The mystery is whether it was murder or suicide. The book goes backward in time starting on Day 4 after his drowning and ending with Day 1. I almost stopped reading as it was sometimes slow, but I'm glad I hung in there.

#whitecover #acrossapril @Eggs

I don't know if it was me or the book but I was spending too much time thinking about what I'd rather be reading

They think Annie and I are peculiar for throwing water on the fire each night before sleep, but I tend to think they‘re peculiar for preferring to burn in their beds. Once you‘ve lost your mother to fire, you never feel the same way about going to bed with a flame still live.

#coffeeandabook #Scribd

Starting this today for my December book discussion at Interabang Books in Dallas. The store was demo lished by the Tornado, but the community is rallying and author talks and book clubs are going forward in other spaces.

It was remarkably difficult to find a book on my shelves with #AutumnLeaves on the cover. 🤔

(This pretty cover shows a detail from an Arras tapestry in The Cluny Museum, Paris).

#ScreamathonPhotoChallenge
#Screamathon

Kind of an inside out and backwards murder mystery, really cleverly written; but I have to say it felt less historical the more I read of it. “So-so” is probably too harsh but this was ultimately a little meh for me.

I love this cover. Hope the inside is as good as the outside.

https://wellreadneck.wordpress.com/2019/05/31/the-western-wind-samantha-harvey/

That was a hard one to finish. Anti-climatic ending and not much of a plot. Written in the same style as ‘Drive Your Plow Over a the Bones of the Dead‘, the story is written entirely from the point of view of the narrator‘s internal musings and thoughts, with the main protagonist being the town of Oakham rather than any specific character. I essentially read the same book twice this year, just written by two different authors. Skip this book.

I honestly don't remember why I requested this from the library, but I decided to give it a shot and ended up really enjoying it! It's a murder mystery set in a medeival village, told from the perspective of the priest. And it's told backwards, starting with the discovery of the body going back to the day the guy died. You would think this limits your possibilities, but in the end it was surprisingly effective and made a lot of thematic sense.

An intriguing rd which had me so gripped i had to reread the beginning when i got to the end. Told backwards over 4 days up to shrove Tuesday 1491 priest john reve hears confessions of his parishioners at the behest of an assertive dean to find out if his friend(local landowner) killed himself or was murdered #booked2019 'new to me author' rd it covers faith,history at a crucial pre reformation period, friendship, superstition, religion. A good rd

#ALittlePriest

Set in England in 1491, this novel about the death of a local rich man is narrated (going back in time over four days) by the village priest.

#MusicalNewYear

The writing in this novel absolutely blew me away. It is one of those books that I slowly read every word, but the chapters flew by. This story takes place in an English village in 1491. A village man is missing and presumed drowned in the river in what appears to be an accident. But when the regional dean comes to investigate, he wants a villager to be blamed. The story is told backward and the unraveling in this way is very clever.

A DNF. It was okay...well written in parts even. The author's descriptive language is beautiful. It just didn't grab my interest and it was a bit of a slog, not sure why. A man is dead, a village falls under suspicion, a priest is under pressure to investigate.... but just too slow for me I guess.

"15th century Oakham, in Somerset; a tiny village cut off by a big river with no bridge. When a man is swept away by the river in the early hours of Shrove Saturday, an explanation has to be found: accident, suicide or murder? The village priest, John Reve, is privy to many secrets in his role as confessor. But will he be able to unravel what happened to the victim, Thomas Newman, the wealthiest, most capable man in the village?" #TBRtemptation!

The descriptions in this book are an utter delight. Evocative in a way that has me stopping to re-read, without becoming overblown. Another early favourite is, “[clothes made] of a wool that had never managed to look un-sheeply”.

I have a feeling this one will be a Man Booker Prize contender. A novel told in reverse over the course of 4 days. In a poor 15th century village, a man dies and the villagers turn to their priest in turmoil. It‘s a really beautiful examination of human nature. And the descriptions of food made me perpetually hungry. For fans of Wolf Hall! It also reminded me of the Luminaries.

I can‘t recommend this book highly enough.

#TBS A gift on Mothering Sunday

Haven‘t been this excited about weekend reading in a while .... but this was in the mail today from the UK #bookmail

1. I love my Behemoth (Master and Margarita) print ♥️
2. It was to stop requesting more Netgalley ARCs than I can handle but then I got auto-approved by Random House...
3. Glasses
4. Starry night sky. I have plans to visit the Edinburgh Observatory for one of their winter sessions this year ✨🌌🌠
@MinDea #humpdaypost