panI know this book has so many accolades, but if this wasn‘t for Bookclub, I would‘ve tossed it 20 pages in. I‘m not a short story person, but when it‘s this chaotic, it‘s even worse.
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I'm going with 2 classics and one newer selection today:
1. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (my husband loves it, and we read it every Christmas)
2. “The Tell-Tale Heart“ by Edgar Allan Poe (it's just so good!)
3. Flights by Olga Tokarczuk (It's too hard to pick a single story from this one)
#tlt #threelistthursday
Just a little tiny book haul today, because I definitely needed more books…
Popped into the library to pick up some ‘possibles‘ for the Women‘s Prize for fiction (and no I‘m not telling you how many library books I now have on loan!) and they had a book sale on, so I had to support, of course, by buying 5 books.
Young Queens is on the NF long list and came out today, and Mongrel because it‘s also rumoured for the Fiction Prize and sounds fab.
pickDense, reflective, philosophical. Longer and shorter personal and fictional stories and a brief history on plastination; an unnerving and haunting dissection of the human body and of human paroxysmal emotions.
"This always happens when she flies: she gets a bird‘s eye view of her whole life, of particular moments that you‘d think on the ground had been completely forgotten. The banal mechanism of the flashback, mechanical reminiscence."
pickThe stories in this book seem to be set between time and place. Olga Tokarczuk travels and writes about the people she meets, whom she talks to or only observes. But she also dives back in time and presents us the early days of anatomical studies. It may sound weird but I feel like I travelled with Tokarczuk and finishing the book feels like the arrival afterwards long flight.
It‘s an intense experience even though I didn‘t enjoy all stories.
I love this image at the bottom left corner by Abbey Lossing from a Conde Nast article about women travlers.
This book makes me think of traveling, and searching, and of people sitting around a fire telling stories.
The book is filled with storeis, some interlocking, some we keep coming back to, some we just get a glance at. I can see how some didn't like it - it can feel a bit disjointed, but if you are a traveler who dips in and out of areas
pick5⭐
This is not a book for everyone. But this is the book for me. As a traveler I feel this book on many levels, the main thread follows a narrator as she travels the globe and tells us stories of other travelers. These stories start and stop in small bursts, some picking up pages and pages later some trickling to an inconclusive end. It reminded me of overheard conversations in airports or restaurants.
The language is utterly gorgeous.
This is written in Polish. Talking about how because so many people around the world know English we cease to have our own private language as so many others do.
This chapter (this is the entirety of it) stopped me in my tracks. I just love her writing her and the thought process, it is framed in a way I never thought to see it.
“She thought about how no one had taught us to grow old, how we didn‘t know what it would be like. When we were young we thought of old age as an ailment that affected only other people. While we, for reasons never entirely clear, would remain young. We treated the old as though they were responsible for their condition somehow, as though they‘d done something to earn it, like some types of diabetes or arteriosclerosis.....“
I am absolutely loving the language Tokarczuk uses in this novel. It is a meandering, thoughtful, book revolving around travel, and as a traveler I think I might be in love.
Standing there on the embankment, staring into the current, I realized that—in spite of all the risks involved—a thing in motion will always be better than a thing at rest; that change will always be a nobler thing than permanence; that that which is static will degenerate and decay, turn to ash, while that which is in motion is able to last for all eternity.
pickWorthy of its accolades. Tokarczuk has such a smooth way with words. I could read her bumble on as long as she wants to.
Not sure why I just noticed this but I picked both of these up a week ago - in different towns, one free, one I paid for. I put them on a shelf and never noticed they pretty much have the same name. Weird. I must be ready to fly.
pickI admit this started as a rabbit hole. This book was mentioned in Come Fly with Me which we read in Nov for #SundayBuddyRead. And the audiobook is lovely. This is an early work by an award winning Polish author. It's short stories. It's nonlinear and some stories are broken up. Others are bite sized stand alone awesomeness.
As the little plane that will transport her to the main airport becomes aloft she sees a view so beautiful that for a moment she is overwhelmed by a kind of elation.... These islands, the sandy beaches are as much a part of her as her own hands and feet; the sea that winds up into foaming coils at the shores, scraps of ships and boats, the gentle, undulating shoreline, the green insides of the islands all belong to her.
Am I doing the right thing by telling stories? Wouldnt it be better to fasten the mind with a clip, tighten the reins and express myself not by means of stories and histories, but with the simplicity of a lecture, where in sentence ather sentence a single thought gets clarified, and then others are tacked onto it in the succeeding paragraphs? ....
Tales have a kind of inherent inertia...
pickI read most of this before Christmas, then finished it over this past weekend. It's odd, because it's little fragments and not a linear story, but I think it would have been better without the break. I'd like to read to again sometime.
pickFlights - what a fitting title. We're travelling from place to another, long texts, short texts, many characters that accompany us. Every now and then we meet the First Person Narrator again. This book is restless, and it feels like that. What a phenomenal author Olga Tokarczuk is! She doesn't need many words to drag ones soul out of the dark into the pure light. Amazing book, amazing writer.
@TheAromaofBooks #BookSpinBingo
so-soMy #doublespin book for May -- I wasn't sure if I would make it, but I muddled through. I think my biggest issue was that I wasn't sure WHAT I was reading. Supposedly, it's a novel, but it did not feel like it at all. I think I kept reading because I wanted to make sense of it, but I never did. Oh well!
@TheAromaofBooks
#Booked2021 #TranslatedIntoYourFirstLanguage @Cinfhen @BarbaraTheBibliophage @4thhouseontheleft
Having mixed feelings about this one so far.
pickThis book is a series of stories that seem to all link in some way, though I‘m not entirely certain. The theme of flight, whether on a plane, running away, or after death, is present throughout. It‘s a little odd and I didn‘t love it, but I did like it and the writing is good. I think it would be better in print given how short some of the pieces are; on audio it gets a little confusing.
#ReadingEurope2020 #Poland
so-soI‘m not sure about what I just read and I feel like I missed something.
The blurb says that this is a book about a group of people that doesn‘t acknowledge any form of religious or worldly authority who believe that the only way to escape is to be moving and never settle down
I didn‘t see that at all. I feel like I read about the preservation of the body after death in glass containers through history and the different sides to that.
#BookReport #WeeklyForcast
Just finished:
? Flights
? A book about Kjell Aukrust‘s creative world
Starting now:
? The seventh book in Läckberg‘s crime series
Next up:
? Djinn Patrol
? Still listening to the seventh Department Q book, and want to finish soon and start the eighth book.
#BookReport
I‘m very happy about my reading this week.
? Finished both the book by Høyer and A Manual for Cleaning Women #BookSpin
? Read all the other in the stack, Lila #DoubleSpin and the bottom 4 for #24B4Monday
? Started the tagged book
? I‘ve listened to the seventh Department Q book
@ju.ca.no #ispy my phone for a dark blue cover. I am at my parents' right now and most of my books are in another town, hence, not many options here. Thanks for tagging me, this is fun! 🐳💙
Omg thank you @Cinfhen for all the wonderful birthday goodies! Bun Bun is equally impressed. 😂
On to my middle school looking lunch and on to the next book of this new year. Excited to see how thought provoking this‘ll be!
Translator and writer funding from Olga Tokarczuk: https://notesfrompoland.com/2019/12/05/tokarczuk-uses-nobel-money-to-launch-foun...
The Nobel Prize winners!!
Finally the day is here we are headed to Hawaii so thankful and grateful to be able to move there 🙌🏽🙏😋
pickI've been reading this book off and on for two months, finally finishing it before the end of #WITmonth - I wouldn't really call this a novel as much as it is fragments with some shared themes. I enjoyed some of the writing and was glad one of the stories came back to conclude in the end. There are themes of travel, moving, death, relationships and what you can/can't control, and home. ⤵️
I showed great restraint at Shakespeare & Co. bookstore, I walked away with only one book, which was gifted to me by the fabulously witty & wonderful @MicheleinPhilly ♥️However, when it came to pizza, cookies and girly chatter there was no holding back. Perfect day in Philly with a great friend 😃 Always a blast, Michele 😘
“Standing there on the embankment, staring into the current, I realized that—in spite of all the risks involved—a thing in motion will always be better than a thing at rest; that change will always be a nobler thing than permanence; that that which is static will degenerate and decay, turn to ash, while that which is in motion is able to last for all eternity.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Flights
#quote #favourite #literaryfiction #womenintranslation
True story: In my Litsy profile pic, I am holding a preserved human brain. (At the National Science Fair. It's not like I keep brains in my house, people!)
womenintranslation #wit
pickWhile my library has categorized this existential novel as short stories, I disagree. I‘m not sure what is, but I am sure that I loved it. It‘s an electrifying accumulation of fragmentary flights of fancy, historical & contemporary, interconnected in a variety of ways, most especially by the themes of escape & the preservation of human corpses. After the #audiobook, I picked it up in print to better absorb the magnificent language. #translation
That smile of theirs holds—or so it strikes us—a kind of promise that perhaps we will be born anew now, this time in the right time and the right place.
(Author photo from Internet)
My five-star reads this month include one that I‘ve not yet reviewed on Litsy: Flights. I‘m still gathering up the pieces from the way it exploded my mind.
I‘m 4 hours into this astonishing #audiobook and feeling alternately intrigued by the situations and lulled by the language. I had expected a collection of short stories but many of these brief pieces are more like prose poems or poetic essays. I‘m going to pick up the print version because there are so many great passages that I want to spend time absorbing and rereading.
Flights | 
