Welcome to Litsy!

With all my catch up posting last night I almost forgot #huggehourreadathon I got the Thanksgiving decorations up, made a pot roast for Sunday family dinner and we tried out a new card game. I was so tired that when all was said and done I maybe read 3 pages in this months book club pick.

Orange tells an important story about the diverse and fragmented identities of colonised peoples in the United States. It‘s a story that very much centres the harms caused by colonisation. At times I found it a little meandering, and uneven, but ultimately, it‘s a gritty, person-centred novel that builds to a devastating conclusion, and it had my attention.

A collection of indigenous stories about 12 people who are unknowingly connected and about to collide at powwow.Incredible and poignant,this was an amazing book that brings to light part of America‘s atrocious past and how it still impacts native Americans generations later.Full of historical details and personal traumas.This is not an uplifting story,but the best historical fiction works aren‘t cookie cutter happily ever afters. Book#68 in2024

#CoverLove

Grabbed this book with its VERY #Orange cover from a Little Free Library several months ago & it‘s in my TBR
🧡🍊🧡

This one definitely deserves a reread. I feel like you‘d get so much more out of it each new read through. I love the rotating characters, but would have loved a family tree to reference too.

🥺

Lovely article about kids reading There There in the classroom - and Tommy Orange visiting.

A Bronx Teacher Asked. Tommy Orange Answered. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/18/books/tommy-orange-there-there-wandering-star...

As his new book hits stores, I‘ve finally gotten around to reading There There. I enjoyed the book for its structure - first person multiple POV. Plus, it takes place in Oakland and so it‘s always interesting to read stories that take place in my own neck of the woods.

Powerful

A 4 of 5 ⭐️ novel of intertwining lives, generations and personal stories as a group of seemingly disparate people make their way to the Oakland Powwow. Most are searching for self, family and tradition, but others are going with dark intentions. I listened to the audio. A large voice cast made each character distinct. Each character‘s story was powerful as the plot amped up the tension to the end. It‘s a pick. Looking forward to Orange‘s next.

This was a One Book One Philadelphia selection.

#debutbyindigenousauthor #bookbinge

#BookBingo @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks @Eggs
#DebutByIndigenousAuthor

So good. Can‘t wait to discuss with mom and the rest of the library discussion group.

Gritty.

This novel is one of the great loves of my life. It reads straight through, with lots of characters, and my new favourite activity is to reread chapters at random. The chapters work as their own short stories and part of a whole all at once.

Plus, I MET THE AUTHOR THIS YEAR AND HE WAS SOOOOO COOOOOOOL 😍🥰🥰🥰 10/10 would hang out for a long chat, and he gave superb book and podcast recommendations ❤️
#tommyorange #fiction #urban #shortstories

This was a great book- the format was really interesting and allowed the readers to feel connected to the characters. He is such a poetic writer. Also the plot line was great- would absolutely recommend

This was an incredible read about Native Americans living in Oakland. It was about belonging and identity centered around multiple characters who all attended a powwow at the end of the story where violence ensues. 5/5

I finally discovered (it‘s apparently been up for a year) 🤦🏻‍♀️ a little free library in my neighborhood & just about a mile away from my house. I left 2 books & a few book stickers & took the tagged book, which I have been wanting to read. 📚💚

This had a disorienting number of characters, but it was a good book with an intense ending. #indiegnousauthors

My friend‘s dog Mabel checking out my book! #pugsoflitsy #dogsoflitsy
A different friend‘s puggle, Niko, needs cancer treatment. I would much appreciate it if you could share this link so he can get it: https://gofund.me/782c67cb
Thank you!

Read this 4 work as it‘s one of the One Maryland One Book Top 11 this year! A powerful read. It‘s a compilation of Native peoples‘ POV as they all converge at the Oakland Powwow. It was interesting to see how all the characters were connected & their histories. The Powwow scenes were gripping & short as POV kept switching. I was satisfied with the way the story ended.

Great list to come back to. Suggestions invited!

Great book that deals with a lot of tough topics. It is about 12 native Americans getting ready to go to a powwow in Oakland California. I think I would like this book better if the characters were narrowed down to 3 or 4 of them. It was too hard to keep track of all the characters with there being 12 of them.

#tbt Throwback Thursday - feature books I have read that I think are awesome, that need more discussion or push for others to read.
Play, tag, join in (I am terrible at tagging people!)

November in the States is Indigenous People's Month, and this book does an amazing job weaving modern Native history (if you do not know about Alcatraz Island and the Indigenous people it is worth a look into), many story lines, and a big climax.
Amazing book.

I really enjoyed this, altho I thought the ending felt a little too chaotic to be left open ended.

Hoping to get to this one soon
#OminousOctober #Orange @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks @Eggs

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Amazing. This was my second time reading this one and I loved it just as much. This is such an important book. Honest. The Interlude is one of the best pieces of writing I‘ve read. Very much recommend especially since Thanksgiving is around the corner.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is a fast paced multigenerational story of twelve Native characters, on their way to the Big Oakland Powwow. The Powwow is a celebration of Native culture. There are substantial cash prizes for the winners of the traditional dance competition. Each of the characters has a reason to attend, and as the time grows closer, their stories intersect. A glimpse into the world of urban Natives. Heart wrenching. #booked2022 #titlerepeatsitself

New audiobook. Have had the actual book on my shelves for a few years, so doubling up with the audio. #mttbr

You get to know the histories of the characters and then... A horrific ending. Horrific. I thought it was brilliant how we see the violence that is still high in our indigenous communities.

#Movie2BookRecs @Klou
Prompt: Jack the Bear

This disappointed me, with interesting characters, an intriguing structure, and some important messages. However, it just didn‘t hang together: several characters and perspectives that I couldn‘t engage with, and an ending that made no sense to me at all.
#Booked2022 #TitleRepeatsItself

“We‘ve known the shooter could show up anywhere…the bullets have been coming for miles, years. The tragedy of it all will be unspeakable, the fact that we‘ve been fighting for decades to be recognized as a present-tense people, modern and relevant, alive, only to die in the grass wearing feathers.”

This piece on constant vulnerability of Indigenous people spoke to me today, as a white person thinking about the recent murder of a white friend.

“[Indigenous] kids are jumping out of burning buildings falling to their deaths, and we think the problem is that they‘re jumping. And this is what we‘ve done. We‘ve tried to find ways to get them to stop jumping, convince them that burning alive is better than leaving when the shit gets too hot for them to take. We‘ve boarded up windows and made better nets to catch them, found more convincing ways to persuade them not to jump.”

What an intriguing story, from 12 unique perspectives. History meets present as Tommy takes us through these characters‘ journey to make it to the Big Oakland Powwow. And we learn just how different and connected they all are. The irony is heart-breaking as we learn what it means to be a native in the city- an “urban Indian.” Violence, identity, dislocation, addiction, sacrifice, heroism, and despair rake through the pages, and leave an impact.

Library haul! Which ones should I dive into first?

I loved the book, writing, and the stories. My problem only lies with how many characters there are and keeping their stories straight. I was warned about this and still had problems. ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Beautifully written, heart-wrenching and yet somehow still…hopeful? There are a lot of characters, some you get to know very well and others you only meet briefly. Their stories are masterfully woven together, and even though the ending felt like a freight train bearing down on me, it still wasn‘t exactly what I expected!

1. Lightning Strike
2. Jonny Appleseed
3. There There by Tommy Orange

#WeekendReads. @rachelsbrittain

This month‘s book club pick for Native American Heritage Month. I‘ve wanted to read this book for years, so I‘m glad we finally did. The multiple perspectives were very interesting and less confusing than I thought they‘d be. It was a sad book in many ways, and the end brought me to tears, but I can also see some good elements of characters being reunited and stepping more fully into their identity. I‘m looking forward to our book club discussion.

#GratefulHarvest @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks
#Orange

Somehow this book manages to be both heartbreaking and confusing AF. Maybe it's just the #audiobook but every time the narrator changes it's hard to get your mind wrapped back up into the story. But overall it is very good and the story is important.

My IRL book club picked this as their second November pick (it's possible I picked this and no one protested).

#BookSpinBingo square 2
@TheAromaofBooks

This novel surprised me. For most of it, I wasn't sure if I liked it. I started wishing I'd read the paper version instead of audio because I had trouble keeping the characters and relationships straight, but the last 1/4 or so, it all comes together into something that feels horribly inevitable (in part because Orange has been prepping us for it the entire time). This is another piece of California I hadn't really looked at before.

I was super bummed that I didn‘t read more in 2019 (life ramped up and left me with little downtime). There, There was a top read- I was living in Oakland, CA at the time and it felt very real and grounded to me. I also finally got around to reading the Hunger Games trilogy (I know, I know, I‘m typically behind the times with these kinds of things) and was definitely entertained by the storyline.

Why? Why?
I don't understand this book! It's a big confusion about indian people.
#book #bookly #readingchallenge2021 #libro #litsy #litsybook #goodreads #toread #leggere #bookworm #therethere #tommyorange

I really expected to love this book but I just didn‘t. It was certainly gripping and gritty in places, but much of it felt overworked to me and it just fell flat. It was a bit of a slog for me to get through it, unfortunately. #unpopularopinion

I really enjoyed this one. A multi POV story where the cast all have some kind of connection.
There is something to be said about Orange's writing when he can make me empathize and can almost fully redeem some of the characters who typically I would never think redeemable.
I like when everyone has a story and also gets to tell it.
We need to hear more voices.

#MoviesInMay @Klou
Prompt: Daniel Day-Lewis