Welcome to Litsy!

PT. 2

For the past 2.5 years, my pelvic floor physical therapist has been trying to encourage me to seek mental health therapy again. I am blessed for her persistence and encouragement. Today, I went to my second mental health therapy session since 2018. Pelvic pain and mental health go hand in hand.

#pelvicpain #therapy #sunshine #persistence #trauma

PT. 1 My reward for returning to therapy - sunshine, reading, and a refreshing drink by the river. Several years ago, I felt healed, like I didn't need therapy anymore. My husband had just gotten back from his 1 year deployment in Afghanistan in 2019, and we were planning our wedding. Things were fantastic until I started having severe pelvic pain, which stemmed from trauma related pain due to an abusive relationship I had been in 8 years prior.

My bf recommended me this book and I love it!! The beginning was very slow and hard to get into but I really loved the end it was so good!

Dig by A. S. King is Michael L. Printz award winner. It is a young adult fiction book that was published in 2019. It is about a family who has gotten wealthy from trading in their potato farm for real estate development. All of their children leave the house and dont come back to visit anymore. I think this would be an interesting read for young adults.

#BookSpinBingo @TheAromaofBooks

At first I was confused with this book and it's vast array of characters, but I stuck with it, and I'm glad that I did. The interconnectedness of the characters doesn't start to unfold until somewhere around the halfway point.

This story is about families and relationships. Each character faces a different challenge, but the beautiful way they all come together in the end was impressive writing.

It‘s my YA bookclub‘s 30th anniversary, so at our zoom meeting tonight we are all going to defend our top 5 authors, selected from our reading list that goes back to 1991. A.S. King is at the top of my list. 💜(Note: I didn‘t become a member until 2001. The original group began as a continuation of a YA literature course in the School of Library & Information Science at the University of Alberta.)

I think I walked into this book with too many expectations. On one hand, the writing was AMAZING & protagonists were ?. On the other, I was expecting a “searing indictment” of covert white supremacy, but this is another “look at this one overtly racist, probably republican, white family!” which, frankly, is pretty typical/expected. & while the surrealism was fun, it took away from the message a bit. An engaging read, but I wanted more. ★★★½.

#currentlyreading | whew. Let‘s do this.

Holy crap. I knew this was supposed to be good, but it was easily the best YA I‘ve read in years. Surreal and confusing, especially at first, but it‘s a spot on snapshot of how one generations warped thinking travels through generations.

Every AS King book starts the same for me: different , and maybe a bit weird. Surreal at times. But I always stay with it because I‘m never disappointed. This book - this storytelling - is just phenomenal. They way everything works together is perfect. And at 11pm, I have finished one more book for July‘s #bookspinbingo! Only made 1 bingo, but knocked a bunch of books off my TBR - so I‘m happy about that!

This book floored me, made me feel uncomfortable, made me look at myself differently, made me laugh and cry and highlight. My only complaint was the character of Marla didn't have much depth, and it was glaring when all of the other characters were so rich in difference and change. She was just the worst, beginning to end. This is only a small complaint, and otherwise I loved it. 4.5 stars!

This book is one reason why I have book FOMO! I wanted to quit half way through but I‘m so glad I didn‘t! It was worth pushing through. A book that explores white privilege, family history, and truth. She says the book makes you uncomfortable....id agree but sometimes we need to confront that uncomfortableness to better ourselves.

This book is... changing me. Reshuffling the pieces of me. Unfolding things and worlds I had just the vaguest grasp on. It took me a while to get into its strangely meandering, dry writing - to let it enter and infect my system, which is fitting for a book so ripe with mentions of bodies and things growing and dying under the earth - but boy, it was worth it. I'm rushing through the last sixty pages and I found myself choking back sobs on the bus.

Very weird and difficult to describe or categorize.

In true A.S King fashion this book did not shy away from hard topics and issues. Books like Dig make you look at yourself and the world around you and question everything. This book, I felt did a great job talking about racism both big and small, easy to spot and hard to see. All though gruesome in some parts, life is gruesome sometimes and this book did not shy away from this. It had complex characters, engaging plot and great pacing!

Loved this cast of characters! 9/30
Steps have been made..Yoga 5 out of 7 so there's that!! #BFC #bfcr3 #bookfitnesschallenge @wanderinglynn @julesg @librarianjen @moony @cocoreads @britt_brooke @reecaspieces @jb72 @eeyore031370 @caropi

It‘s kind-of impossible to describe this A.S. King book, like its kind-of impossible to describe every A.S. King book. It‘s about racism, & classism, & sexism; it‘s about ghosts, & shovels, & cancer, & snakes, & potatoes. It‘s about lighting snowflakes on fire. It‘s about The Greatest Show on Earth. It‘s about the wrong words. It‘s about a family falling apart and, maybe, starting to come back together. It‘s fucking ugly & fucking beautiful.

This story dealt with all types of topics. Such as race, family, death, etc. This book started off with an introduction of a whole bunch of characters who did not have normal names but towards the middle and end it starts to make sense. If you pick this up make sure its during a time that you have time for this book. Should be read carefully and with an open mind for it deals with a lot of hard topics.
4⭐⭐⭐⭐

Dad keeps crying. I hug him and he sobs into my chest. It‘s as if we‘d just switched places. Except it‘s not. I think this is what families are supposed to do.

He‘s not sure what he‘s crying about, but he‘s pretty sure he‘s crying about everything.

Believe me, when that fire hose of diarrhea starts, you will realize that up until that moment, your life was fine.

I'm not quite sure how to describe this other than to say - read it, you'll be a little lost at times, more than a little uncomfortable, and you will be so glad you picked it up. It's a surreal look at an extended family, mostly through the eyes of the teenage grandkids, and deals with all the things that lay below the surface in s family. As always, King's books are incredible.

I was hooked from the start by this #audiobook about racism, mental health & family dysfunction. King is an expert at using surrealism & shifting points of view to pull together a cohesive, heartbreaking story with powerful & positive messages:
-Truth is a purging that makes you feel better, not worse.
-Belief systems are all pretty much the same, if you peel back the layers.
-Dig your way out.
-Change your mind.
-Pay attention to love.

“You guys don‘t know how to have any fun,” Gottfried yells into the woods. “The whole idea is to be the one who finds all of the eggs, not to help each other.”
The teens ignore him.

(Internet photo)

“We drive through town, toward the mountain with the bizarre pagoda on it.” Ha! I‘m tickled that the pagoda from Please Ignore Vera Deitz, one of King‘s earlier novels, is mentioned. I think it‘s located in Reading, PA. (She talks about it here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=u4KEteXzKzA )

…every one of them knew someone who was dying of cancer. Didn‘t matter if they wouldn‘t smoke a joint if you lit it for them. What mattered is that they didn‘t want to watch their loved ones suffer. And, outside of my grandparents, I can‘t say I‘ve ever met anyone who wanted to watch their loved ones suffer.

(Photo: my Christmas cannabis socks, an accidental purchase)

Food poisoning was surprisingly freeing. The primal way in which my body purged the shrimp from itself was like a peyote trip. I‘ve never had a peyote trip, but going on what Dad says about it, I‘d say food poisoning compares.