Ducks, Newburyport | 
#AlphabetGame #LetterD
The minute I finished this, I knew I was going to reread it some day. I haven‘t gotten to that jet, but some day
pickStill processing this one, but it was worth listening to.
The MC of this book wouldn‘t shut up about tarte tatin, and since it‘s apple season, I decided to try my hand at it.
The flipping stage was definitely a challenge, especially since I decided to go with the traditional pastry crust, but it still held together surprisingly well. And it‘s delicious 😋
pickBeen listening to this for months and finally finished it today.
It's amazing - I absolutely loved it. It's an incredible document of the state and concerns of the Western world (particularly the US at the current time). I loved being in the narrators head. It's so much more than I thought it would be.
I definitely recommend the audiobook if you aren't sure about this one - it was very easy to slip into the stream and just become absorbed in it
I started this book over the weekend. It‘s so weird! Has anyone actually finished it? It seems a little daunting.
Cinnamon roll update - they look like monstrosities, but actually tasted really good. I'm calling it a win.
@TrishB @squirrelbrain @Caroline2
The hazards of reading a book that features baking and particularly cinnamon rolls. I'm trying some sourdough cinnamon rolls - last time I made cinnamon rolls, they were not so good. Hoping I do better with this recipe!
This is also a good book for audiobaking
Audiowalking with Ducks, Newburyport. I'm finding this an enjoyable, almost relaxing, listen.
so-soThis is Bernard. Bernard is King of the Ducks and is very upset that this 1020 page book about ducks didn‘t mention him once! He will be implementing a law that all books about ducks must be dedicated to him!😡🦆
On a more serious note though, this was such a weird reading experience. I didn‘t want to pick it up, but when I did, I would find myself immersed in the stream-of-consciousness for a brief amount of time until I felt exhausted by it. ⬇️
I‘m just over half way through this book and I‘m definitely enjoying it while I‘m reading, but it takes a surprising amount of effort to pick it up. I have also found that I can‘t read it before bed, because it makes my thoughts race and my brain won‘t stop saying “the fact that...” followed by a bunch of nonsense 🤦♀️
pickWell happy birthday to me! I'm done! 💥 It took me a month but it has been an experience, a journey, a project, a reckoning to read this book. I don't know how this book will fare in the years to come, but it captures so much about NOW: the demands of motherhood, the loneliness of late capitalism, US gun culture, climate change and more. I am grateful to Ellmann for writing something so weirdly specific and brilliantly universal.
so-soSo I actually did it. I finished this.
And my thoughts:
The Goodreads reviews for this are spoiled because practically no one can resist using “the fact that” throughout their review, in a mimicking way.
*sigh*
I got so sick of reading those three words....
Anyway...
Sadly I don‘t think the content justifies the novel‘s length. The sheer size of it makes it feel old fashioned to me. Ellmann does close it out nicely though.
Weekend goal: to finish this chunkster. 💪(Less than 100 pages to go!)
Still reading Ducks. Still into it.
But after pages and pages of solid, dense text, it was a treat to hit this section where she lists what she knows to be definite. Look at all that white space! 😅
Here‘s my #BookSpinBingo list for April! I really want to read the tagged book this month, but since it‘s such a chunkster, I don‘t know how many other books I‘ll get to. I‘ll just try my best! 😊
Why yes, I am still reading this book (p. 380) and I am still relating to the narrator. 🙈 (Guilty on the thank you card front. 😬)
I have been reading this thing forever and a day. I love it though. I understand the criticism this has received but for me, it totally works. I feel like I am the shy (I am), Ohio mother (check, check), who bakes (nope!). I can‘t tell if I identify so much with the stream of consciousness because of the similarities between the MC and myself or if this is just so masterful, everyone takes on this personality after a bit...? 🦆
the fact that the Scottish Enlightenment inspired the American Revolution, and the American Revolution inspired the French Revolution, and the French Revolution inspired the Russian Revolution and the Chinese Revolution and the Cuban Revolution, and those all inspired the Vietnamese Revolution, and maybe some other revolutions in South America, the fact that the thigh bone‘s connected to the knee bone,
Um hello! This resonated so much. Worst soccer mother ever! 🙋♀️
It is a bit unsettling how much I relate to this woman. 😳
I am now over halfway through this. Which, considering what this book is, feels like an accomplishment.
the fact that here I am, effortfully constructing pastry lattices and longing to buy expensive mini-bundt pans and cookie cutters online, while Leo‘s in his study writing an article on displacement, velocity, and acceleration, and the relevance of these actions to road-bridge construction....
pollution, nuclear war, Nagasaki, sciatica, the fact that there was one poor man who witnessed both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I mean both bombs, the fact that he was in Hiroshima when the first bomb hit, survived and stayed the night in a bomb shelter, then managed to get home to Nagasaki the next day just in time for the second bomb, and he survived that one too, the fact that, I mean, how awful....
2021 may just be the year of the chunkster. I didn‘t set any reading goals or challenges, apart from my book a week goodreads goal, but I‘m feeling motivated to take on some of my bulkier TBRs.
It never feels like the right time to pick this one up! But I‘m waiting. I see you on my shelf everyday and I‘m waiting and I‘m hopeful that at any moment I might feel ready!
pickThis took 3 long weeks to read. I read the physical book, ebook, and audio just to try to finish this before January was over. It‘s so long at 1,028 pages of nothing but stream of consciousness with no periods and never ending topics interspersed with the story of a mountain lion and her cubs. It felt like I was inside my own head but I don‘t have 4 kids and I can‘t bake to safe my life. It was a good long read overall, worth the effort it took.
Very far from the heady totals of 2018 but I've DNF'd more books this year than ever in my life so I'm happy to have hit 100!
@BarbaraBB Thanks for the tag! Here are my #20best2020 picks. One 5⭐ (Ducks), five 4.5⭐ (MM through Iza), and the rest were all 4⭐. I'm counting Anniversaries even though I started it in 2019 because I did read most of it in 2020. Hmm, apparently my go-to pandemic reading is Sci-fi? I read a lot of Jemisin this year.
Thanks for the tag @BarbaraBB ! Here are my #20best2020 picks. I tagged the one that is probably my favorite. I really can‘t believe I read some of these in 2020 - longest year EVER. Have you posted a list yet @merelybookish @andrew61 @Megabooks @KVanRead ?
pick3.5 ⭐ Finishing this was a feat. I was determined, no matter how long it took. I was intrigued by this but the format was a barrier for me. It wasn‘t easy for me to read and it was hard to find a comfortable stopping point, so after a while I put it down and didn‘t pick it back up.
It took time to see where the main narrative was going, but once I did, my interest picked up.
I appreciate its ambition, but I really struggled to read it at times.
pickLook what I read! It took me months, but it was like nothing I'd read before, immersive, frustrating, amazing and worthwhile. The thoughts of a shy Ohio woman as she cares for her family and bakes pies and cinnamon rolls and lives her life.
Some might consider the narrator of Ducks, Newburyport #flaky, but should we really judge by someone‘s interior, unedited monologue? Inside my head is pretty messy too. Also, the narrator makes pies with what can only be imagined as having delicious, flaky crusts!
#FallFinds
Book haul courtesy of Teacher Appreciation Days at Indigo. (And after my first full week with students, I needed it. 😁) I scored an additional 10% off too because of a promotion they are running to encourage loyal Plum card holders to switch to Plum Plus. Tagged book is my son‘s; I have zero desire to read it, but he likes weird stuff.
This beast came in and I‘m so excited. I asked my husband to pick it up on the way home and was so pumped and said it‘s like a stream of consciousness. He told the librarian that I had a book called “stream of consciousness” on hold and the poor woman looked for it for like 10 minutes before he realized he had made an error and it was the huge, weird book he was holding 🤣
I keep going back and forth between being utterly immersed in this book, and finding it a slog. A side effect has been that I've been baking a lot more since I started this one.
bailedA huge DNF to this book, not for its length (which I was mostly enjoying and feeling challenged by) but for its intense and oftentimes graphically violent content. This book made me so angry. I wanted to like it, but the MC was so irritating. In one sentence, she could talk about extreme sexual violence, but then she couldn‘t use the words butt or ass in the next one? WTF. Come on already. Definitely not a believable character. ⬇️
I took a break from reading this for a couple weeks, but I started back up again yesterday. It‘s slow going, but I‘m pushing through. I really want to know this, though: why is she so obsessed with Laura Ingalls Wilder? I don‘t get the fascination. She talks about those books so much that I don‘t even need to reread them to be familiar with all the major plot points. Odd.
My new book sleeve is so generously sized that Ducks, Newburyport fits inside it, even though it‘s over 1,000 pages long! I‘m so excited!! And llamas too? Happiness!
🦙 🦙 🦙
🌼 I‘m still reading Ducks. It will likely take me a few more weeks. Bookly estimates just under 39 more hours, if I keep reading at the same pace. Yay for audiobooks!
🌼 Random fact about me: I think my favorite lip balm is this unusual peanut butter peppermint one that I purchased on Amazon. It sounds strange, but I love the flavor combination.
🌼 I could be reading more, but I get so stuck on choosing a book that I don‘t read much sometimes.
🌸 I don‘t accessorize much. I do wear a handmade silver pendant with wildflowers on it pretty much every day, though. Does that count?
🌸 Yes, the Kalahari.
🌸 I‘m reading the tagged book and really enjoying it. It‘s so super long, though. I don‘t expect to finish it for weeks yet!
#ThoughtfulThursday @MoonWitch94
Wanna play? Consider yourself tagged!
pickSensational. I've fallen out of love with chunksters over the years, their length is often bloated and cumbersome but this was a delight at every turn and felt a fraction of its 1000+ pages. The meandering train of the narrative is fraught with anxiety about every aspect of modern life, from child-rearing to police shootings. It feels honest throughout as its wends through daily dramas and life-changing events with insight and humour. Go, read it.
Currently up to page 78 in this book. It‘s slow going, but I‘m actually finding it really interesting, and I get a lot of the references, which I like.
Still going steady for the #JubilantJuly #readathon at 355/800 pages. I‘m bouncing back and forth between a few different books, but it‘s been fun. Still haven‘t settled on a NF book yet. Gotta get on that. :)
Another photo of my sunflowers. 🌻🌻🌻
Working my way through Ducks while participating in the #JubilantJuly #readathon . I‘m still on track with my goals with 278/800 pages read. I‘ve also completed my poetry book, but I still haven‘t started the NF one. Progress! :)
Pic is of the dinosaurs on my bookcase. 🦕 🦖
Just started reading this tonight. I‘ve heard so much about it. I know what I‘ll be listening to in the middle of the night if I can‘t sleep again!
