Welcome to Litsy!

Interesting book of living a life vicariously after a sibling‘s death. This exploration of feelings & reflections is taken even further when adding thoughts/ideas only related to the color white. Loved it‘s uniqueness.

This is a very tender, but also very sad book. In different very short texts, Han Kang talks about white things. White being the color of mourning in Korea. We learn about her older sister, who died shortly after birth. We learn how that still hunts Kang, how it affects her life. I was deeply moved by this work, by its calmness, by its insights.

This reads like a collection of prose poetry. A series of white things, with a theme on an older sister who only lived a couple hours. Each topic gets a page or so. A blizzard is characterized by "this oppressive weight of beauty", a handkerchief is falling "like a soul tentatively sounding out the place it might alight". Very interesting, if generally mystifying to me.

150 pages with maybe 80 pages of actual text, the rest white space. It reads like a series of prose poems on white things. Although not poetic in rhythm, the feelings they left me with are very similar that of Emily Dickinson‘s poetry that I‘m currently reading. Han writes of about an older sister who lived for 2 hours in Korea, while looking out at snowy Warsaw, Poland.

#DecemberDreams Day 2 #whitestack

A stack of white books, some of them...waiting for me to be read😳🎄

@Eggs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

Few new additions to my library.

I say library. Bedroom.

I say bedroom. Bedroom floor.

Currently reading

My last #AlphabetTitles post!

W-z so many great book. And I cleaned out my bookcases enough to get all the books off the floor...until tomorrow when I finish another and gave nowhere to put it!

#whitecovers #acrossapril @Eggs

Han Kang is always such a pleasure. I had no idea this book was inspired by the absence left by a sister who never got to be. Visiting a city in Eastern Europe is the trigger for a storm of reflection on white images and concepts, ricocheting off the pages. Starting from her sister's white, pasty face and the milk she only just started to drink to the moon, to snow, to her old family's dog. Simple and heartbreaking but, as always, tender.

Very short and easy read, almost like a poetry book

Really like this author but just don't have any feelings about this one.

When your library borrowing takes on the next level...
I‘ve already maxed out my library card for 20 holds, so I borrowed my husband‘s for this pile 🙈
#libraryhaul #librarystack

Something that seems unconnected but is connected. A refreshing new concept of the book. @AkashPhoenix #7days7covers #day1 love for pristine white!!

A beautifully translated, delicate work with a melancholic tone. It‘s a series of vignettes circling around the death of Han Kang‘s sister before she was born. This would work well if you read it mindfully, one each day - almost like a meditation. But it‘s not a book to entertain & keep you turning the page. I‘m an impatient reader so it didn‘t suit me. ;) #womenintranslation #witmonth

This was an impulse checkout from the public library - a woman moves to Warsaw in winter and is inspired by a sister who died before she was born to meditate on the color white. What follows feels like essay, like Knausgard with his lists of topics in his seasonal books, but with a definite female perspective. TW for infant death and war violence.

I‘ve been intrigued about this book for quite some time and have finally chosen tonight to read it. I‘m starting to realize I‘ve become a mood reader and have slowly accepted that it isn‘t necessarily a bad thing... I just have a lot of books that I want to read 😅🙃 I really enjoyed The Vegetarian and am confident that The White Book will deliver.

We‘ll see! 😃

Reading this book is like walking through a museum and looking at an exhibition of photographs, each depicting a place, animal, landscape, snow or people (white being the predominantly used color) and looking at the exhibits through the eyes of the author. Each 'photograph' also depicts grief, death, birth, physical pain, life. An extraordinary collection of masterpieces, not for everyone, but I loved it.

I mispprehended the nature of this book when I bought it, thinking it a series of prose-poem meditations on white things, which it is, but not realising the interconnectedness of the chapter-verses, linked as they are by the neo-natal death of the author's older sister. I'm not sure I would have bought it knowing it's subject [I've had enough of death and near-death this year], but sometimes a book finds us rather than the other way.

"Each moment is a leap forwards from the brink of an invisible cliff, where time's keen edges are constantly renewed. We lift our foot from the solid ground of all our life lived thus far, and take that perilous step out into the empty air."

https://wellreadneck.wordpress.com/2019/02/21/the-white-book-han-kang-2-21/

Been behind with sharing my blog posts, but this goodie came out last week. Worth adding to your TBR!

A series of meditations on white and white objects as a way of contemplating the impact of her older sister who died in her mother's arms only a few hours old. Beautiful spare writing and formatted not surprisingly with lots of white space on the page.

This genre-bending novel purports to be a series of writings about things that are white. the writings are all brief and poetic. this novel tells the story of a twin, born before the narrator, who died shortly after being born. At times, this book reads like a personal memoir or diary, at times, like poems. There is a dreamlike quality to the writing and both the subject and form seem, like The Vegetarian, subversive. #netgalley

#TBRTuesday

I‘m not likely to get through all of these, but this is my reading list for the week!!!

I really enjoyed 'Human Acts', and am delighted to have received this ARC. A collection of poems about objects that are white.....due 2-12-2019. I cant wait to start this today!
Love Han Kang!
#TheWhiteBook. #NetGalley

This book is so beautiful.

Amazing read ♥️

#southkorea #readaroundtheworld
Oh my goodness. This is so hard to explain. It‘s about grief: specifically the loss of the narrator‘s older, premature sister. At times it‘s heartbreaking. Others, it‘s a little out there. But the flow of the language is captivating- I‘m going to assume that the translator did a fantastic job. I will be thinking about this for a long time.

My daughter's #bookhaul from yesterday.
(At least one of us isn't just buying dead white blokes.)

This came highly recommended, but I think it might be a bit too deep for my current mood.

Poetic book about whiteness, snow, frost, death, loss and a feeling of oppression. Fragile fragments and lots of breathtaking beauty. Han Kang proves her amazing talent once more! 5/5🌟

It‘s really hard to stick to a bookbuying ban IN a bookshop. (I needed a new notebook so I had to go there. Not my fault at all) ? but I just loved the other books by Kang too much, I couldn‘t possibly walk past this!

@JuSt1 wie ich befürchtet hab? @maralinchen

3/6 on #manbookerinternational2018 and South Korea for #litworld2018gb #readingaroundtheworld !

I absolutely adored this book. I think it suited me personally best of all the booker ones so far but I don‘t know if I‘d say it was better than Frankenstein in Baghdad or not, I think that was a better done book in some ways just not very me. Hmm not sure. Both books amazing tho

Really loving this next one from the #manbookerinternational2018 shortlist so far! It might be the most ‘me‘ of all the books on there

Non-conventional novel, whose main thread is death and white color. It is written in vignettes, imageries and that creates very poetic vibes.
Excellent prose, interesting combination of a different media, but unfortunately - this book was not for me and my ‘review‘ stems solely from my lack of interest 🤷‍♀️

Bought another one from the Man Booker International longlist! No way I‘ll get through all of them tho there‘s so many and so many of them are quite difficult reads. I don‘t suppose anyone knows of anyone else who‘s trying to read them??

So many on this list that I'm very excited to read!

Announcement video --> https://youtu.be/Z937VDTXTgI

😍

Afternoon reading. 📖

This will probably be my next-to-last-read of 2017. I was not a fan of Vegetarian, but this is immensely beautiful and poetic. The translation by Deborah Smith is great. The roll is homemade by my girlfriend.