Welcome to Litsy!

#BookReport 18/21

It‘s been such a good week! We Begin at the End is this week‘s favorite, followed by Bel Canto and The Good Muslim. Lot didn‘t work for me but I can see it‘s well written and why people do love it.

Me and this book, we were not a good match. I didn‘t get the structure. Short stories alternate with the coming of age of a young man in Houston (drugs, sex, violence, poverty, a broken family, racism, you name it, it‘s there). I would have preferred a book just about the narrator and his family. Parts were so promising and then didn‘t deliver.
I guess I wanted Bryan Washington to do what he did in Memorial!

I‘m obsessed with the bookshelves on our nightstands. It‘s so wonderful having stacks of books right next to the bed.

Top shelf is books I‘ve finished this month. Middle shelf has books I want to read soon (lord knows if I add them to my regular shelves I‘ll forget they exist), and the bottom shelf has my current reads!

#bookreport

My reading feels like it‘s come to a grinding halt. Working FT is no joke. My favorite times to read are when I wake up in the morning, with a cup of coffee as a good lie in, or at night before bed. The first isn‘t happening at all and the latter is attempted nightly but I just can‘t fight off the sleep. 😭

I‘m looking forward to all the reading this summer will hold!

I‘ve finally had a chance to plan my April #bookspinbingo. I tried to keep a good mix of specific choices v. choices that are less so.

My girls had a two hour dance rehearsal today and I forgot my book. 😱 So I did what any reasonable person would do and compensated by going to B&N.

I stumbled across an Olive Edition and had to buy it. The J Ryan Stradal is because I really enjoyed his first book, plus he‘s a family member of one of my good friends‘ and when he zoomed with our book club, I thought he was wonderful.

AND I GOT A SHORT STORY COLLECTION. 🤯 That should show ⬇️

AMAZING! What a great voice. Pacy, engaging, heartbreaking, moving stories. Highly recommend. Cool insights into Houston queer scene as told by a POC growing up

"When our father split, he took every sound in the house with him."
-"Lot"

"But that night, he stayed with me, with the moon whistling and the cars in the road and the grass inching beneath us like caterpillars."
-"Lot"

"Denise lived in one of those walk-ups that look like garbage from a distance, then you get a little closer and they don‘t look any better."
-"Bayou"

"There‘s the day Mix told me he might like boys, and I said it didn‘t matter, he‘d still be fuckless his whole life."
-"Bayou"
I want that kind of guy friend. ???

"We tried our hand at a dime of weed (courtesy of Jeff‘s older sisters downtown) but I spent that evening lost inside of myself, marveling at all of the space in my head no one had taken the time to tell me about."
-"Shepherd"

"If they‘d paid me more, I could‘ve told them it wasn‘t worth it—but tell someone they want an impossible thing and they‘ll act like you‘ve put out the sun."
-"610 North, 610 West"

This was a good read.

It felt conversational and Bryan Washington blended some heavy content in a casual, but brilliant way. There are themes about loss, family, love, home, and longing

I will say that the way the book goes from story to story threatened my focus a little, but otherwise I enjoyed this.