Welcome to Litsy!

I always say dystopia isn‘t my genre but whenever I do happen to read a dystopian novel I generally always enjoy them! This was no exception. A camera is put into a ‘kentuki‘ (a moveable soft toy sort of thing) & you can be a watcher or a dweller (where people watch you) - so within it there was themes of technology, surveillance etc. I liked the writing, the idea & the characters although it did feel like it could have been more fleshed out.

This arrived today from @CSeydel , thank you! This sounds like my kind of weird. 🙂 From our #book2book swapping, hosted by @AllDebooks .

Open to those who signed up for #BOOK2BOOK hosted by @AllDebooks

Here‘s my review of Little Eyes:
https://litsy.com/p/dFFFQWRCa3Bn

Finally read this gem of a book, which was a gift from @LadyCait84
I really enjoyed it! The premise is the rise of “kentuki,” stuffed animals with cameras and microphones that connect the user with an anonymous viewer somewhere in the world. Schweblin unflinchingly explores all the ways different people would interact with these devices, both as users and viewers. Well written, deeply moving and insightful take on the inevitability of longing.

So my kindle is predicting that “Oscar Wars” will take 18 hours to read. Reading for my LA-themed book club. Probably more than I ever wanted to know about celebrity drama and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It is drawing me in already, but I also have a busy work week ahead so we‘ll see how it goes.

Little Eyes is my fiction book and Path to Enlightenment is my audio for the car. #jubilantjuly

In this brief but deeply unsettling novel, a line of cute new robot animals appear on the market, each with the potential for a connection to a real live person. The implications are deeply disturbing, as anyone who's watched Black Mirror can easily imagine. Deft, precise storytelling render what could have been a tired premise both hauntingly familiar and freshly horrifying. I am still thinking about it days later.

An odd book to read.

3.75/5

Interesting! A sci-fi tech story that felt like a light horror. Kind of quirky but on the verge of something terrible happening.
There were a few more places I felt like the story could have gone - like how the tech would have been absolutely overrun with creeps very quickly. Or how the tech could have been beneficial (or not) for people with disabilities or who are homebound. Would have made it even more interesting.
A very strange pick!

Starting this one today. I bought this a few months ago. I‘m trying to read the books I own, but this is proving to be difficult with all the library holds that are coming in! I am also trying (and failing) to condense my collection. Alas alas 🤦‍♀️

Since I'm on holidays and relaxing, I've tried to get back into reading. ⛱

The tagged book has helped immensely to put me out of a huge reading slump, so I decided it was the right time to give this #20in4 #readathon a go! ☀️

My goal is exactly what is asked: To manage reading for 20 hours within the four days of the readathon.🙂

Not the most obvious pick for a beach read, ⛱ but this one has been on my TBR for ages.
So when I saw it at a bookstore at Cologne Main Station, it was an instant autobuy.
Now finally relaxing at the beach in the sun, this adds a nice creepy vibe...😈

#beach #beachreads #suspense

I‘ve read ONE CHAPTER and I am hooked…what the heck is this book?😳

I'm so excited about reading all of these. It's going to be a good couple of reading months. This is what happens when you can't go book shopping in real life for so long. You get overexcited and this is the result.

#BookCupidSwap @LadyCait84 @candority

Love all my goodies! Dove chocolates are my favorite, and there‘s 3 different kinds in there 💕 I hadn‘t heard of this book before, but it looks really good. I always like reading more translated works and this seems like it will be creepy and fun! Thank you so much!

❤️📚💗🍫❤️📚💕🍫❤️📚💕🍫❤️📚

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This was an unsettling read tinged with creepiness and sadness. The book is short and there are several characters (recurring and not), so there isn‘t a lot of time spent with each, but I thought the time that was spent with each was used well. I liked getting to see how all the different characters were affected by kentukis.

#booked2021 #LatinxAuthor #NewYearWhoDis #catsoflitsy #Ember

3.5 ⭐️ - almost 4 - maybe 4 - we‘ll see.

Another book about humans keep being human, no matter what tech they develop. And it‘s up to each character - and you - to decide if that‘s good.

My last book of 2020 is Axiom‘s End, which I just finished for #lmpbc, and my first book of 2021 will be Little Eyes, which I‘m reading for #newyearwhodis.

#lastfirst

These are the books I read in October. I forgot how much I love Agatha Christie. Little Eyes was creepy and with a similar theme to One by One.The All-Night Sun was a nice surprise and Leave the World Behind was perfect. Drive Your Plow was beautifully written and Priestdaddy was hysterical. When We were Vikings had a wonderful protagonist. Pretty good month! #octoberreads

An interesting look at how we adjust to tech in our lives. Would you be rather have a Kentuki follow you or be the random person watching/inhabiting the Kentuki...?!? 👀

I have been so absent from Litsy through a ton of life changes. Moving, job promotion, relationship developments. I am happy to be back after a tumultuous couple of months. Everything is looking up and these have been two books I‘ve read in the last few weeks that I would give more than five stars if I could.

A creepy, claustrophobic novel exploring our relationship with technology and with ourselves, the nature of freedom and capitalism, and how easy it is to make strong, often indelible judgments based on a limited perspective and very little information. I'll be seeking out more by Samanta Schweblin.

#ReadingEurope2020 @BarbaraBB @Librarybelle I'm using this for #Croatia even though only a section of the book takes place there.

There's a lot I loved about this book. The idea of the creepy furby-ish toys controlled by someone else, the exploration of people's relationships with them, and the overall lonely feeling the book had. However, because the book was short, I felt like nothing ever developed to its full potential.

This was just so slow and over complicated. Maybe it was the translation, but I just could not stay interested in this one.

In his review of this novel, critic Jason Sheehan writes, “Schweblin is not a science fiction writer. Which is probably one of the reasons why Little Eyes...reads like such great science fiction.“ Schweblin uses an epitaph by Le Guin, a writer who I often think of as not a sci-fi writer but one who writes great sci-fi. I was anticipating that Little Eyes would be along the lines of a clever Black Mirrors episode. Alas, it is not.👇

"For almost a week now, Emilia had spent some two hours a day circulating around Eva's apartment. She'd told her girlfriends about it at their Thursday coffee, after swimming. Gloria asked what was this thing that Emilia called "kentuki," and as soon as she understood she decided to buy one for her own house, for the afternoons when she took care of her grandson. Inés, on the other hand, was horrified..."

Wow! I loved this one.

I was pretty blown away by the supremely weird Fever Dream so I‘m pumped to see what this has in store.

This was an odd book for beach reading. Although it‘s kind of a neat lens through which to think about surveillance culture and how we engage with each other digitally (preference for seeing vs being seen), it never really gripped me.

As someone who refuses to allow Alexa in the house, this book is deeply unsettling. It's damn good, though: I couldn't put it down!

Obviously, privacy is a recurring theme but what got under my skin was the discrepancy between individuals' assumptions about their interactions and the reality of them. Also, the damage people do to themselves and others when anonymity means a total lack of accountability for their actions.

I won't forget this one.

I can always count on Schweblin for literary and weird in the best possible way. As if I needed more reasons to fear a Furby.

Samantha Schweblin is mistress of the messed up. The ending of Little Eyes is absolutely haunting me. A new device called a Kentuki is all the rage. Imagine a furby on wheels, but if you're "keeper" to the toy, a stranger somewhere in the world is "dweller," watching, listening... Who has the power in this dynamic? How will people behave on either end of this connection?

A completely disturbing look at the good and bad sides of anonymous interactions through robotic “pets” and how horribly, horribly they can go awry. I was shaken and agitated in the best possible way. 4.5⭐️

#readingeurope2020 either #Norway or #Croatia

#nutsinmay 4/4 goals complete! I get my prize!! Going to try for 1 more of each 📚🎧

#bookmail #bookdepository 😁📚💖

Picked up these 2 new beauties from my city‘s indie bookstore! 😍

A novel about furry puppet like surveillance devices that connect two persons that do not know each other. Makes you to think about the social media, internet and technology that make our world turn around.

Currently reading 📖

I loved the author‘s Fever Dream. I haven‘t yet read her short story out last year. But, I suspect it‘s excellent. Why? Because the first chapter of this book would be a nearly perfect short story. But, stretching this into a novel just didn‘t work for me. #Edelweiss #ARC

A little COVID reading

One of my Latinx author purchases. This one is in Spanish and I‘m very excited to read it!

This is my book #2 for the #bookfitnesschallenge #bfc and I like it a lot. Is an excellent critic to our society and our relationship with technology. #espanol #spanish

So I was last week in Spain and of course I need it to buy a couple of books. This is my March #bookhaul....