Welcome to Litsy!

A man leaves a dinner party at a relative stranger‘s house to go upstairs, promptly locks himself in a spare room & won‘t come out. The rest of the book centers on three other characters who barely know the man. There are fantastic scenes and great lines scattered throughout and, as usual, Smith can blow your socks off with her way with words. In fact, her use of puns and knock-knock jokes made me chuckle. It‘s a pick but a low one for me.

This line may not translate as well as a one-liner, but it‘s a great ending to a paragraph about Google (and in my mind any social media.). I find myself alternately informed and insulted whenever I am on social media.

Ali Smith is one of my absolute favorite writers and this book has so much of her signature brilliance. The word play and meandering monologues that suddenly reveal a key piece of information, characters to fall in love with, and bizarre events that are really about something much larger. The dinner party scene in the book is unforgettable.

#12Booksof2022 day 6

It‘s Ali Smith.
This time a man who has been brought by a friend, to someone‘s dinner, locks himself into the bedroom of the people he visits.

#AdventRecommends December 12th

The second Ali Smith.
This one is about a man who‘s invited to dinner. When everything thinks he‘s going to borrow the toilet, he locks himself in one of the bedrooms and refuse to move. We see the way this is effecting people around him

Interesting read, four chapters which illustrate differing views on Miles' self imprisonment and his place in his life and the world. I liked the linguistic cleverness very much.

You know when you've finished a really marvellous book and nothing will fill the void? That happened last night and thus I spent an hour dithering over which one to read next. I worried this might be a bit highbrow but so far it's very clever and keeping me turning the pages. ☺☺

She‘s a great writer, so I enjoyed this book. I wanted more detail about the man who locks himself in the room - he seems kind and well adjusted in everyone‘s telling or interactions with him - is that why he does it? For a break from reality? Some characters are horrible, but mostly kind and funny and normal people

Once there was a man who followed a friend to a dinner party. While there, the man decides to lock himself in the spare room and refuse to come out. Fact, we follow some people close to him and the house over the following days and months and see how his decision influence many.

This is a typical Smith novel, playing with language and words. Looking at art. Looking at people connecting to each other.

4th book read for #JoysOfJune
@Andrew65

The fact is, imagine a man sitting on an exercise bike in a spare room.

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

So I have been seeing this one on my book groups I‘m in on Facebook. Think it would be fun to start on here. Rules are simple if you're tagged post a pic of a book you own with the color. Pick the next color and tag some people. #ispy
@HoneyBeeLee

Thanks for the tag @Eggs

The next color is red.

Help, all Littens who rave about this book!
Am I missing something?
I tried the audiobook (listened to about 20%) and found this completely incoherent.
Should I just read it instead? Or is it really just incoherent?

When you think you've finally found a place for all of your books in your new home but then you find one more box in the basement... 🤪

1. JRR Tolkien
2. There But For The by Ali Smith
3. To Kill a Mockingbird
4. Tea
#lettert #manicmonday @ joscho

This was so much better than I was expecting! After really not getting along with How to be Both I really enjoyed this. It was like the closest thing I‘ve ever read to a modern Virginia Woolf. The characters were amazing, particularly Brook, and I almost never relate to child characters so she must have been really well done. Quietly profound, amazingly socially observed and never pretentious. A total masterpiece

Incredible book so far. The long description of the awful, awful dinner party with all the slightly different right wing viewpoints and the endless squabbling between people that goes round in circles is making my Home Counties hair stand up on end. I don‘t think I‘ve read anything that portrays that kind of society so accurately (and bone chillingly).

I‘ve had mixed experiences of Ali Smith but enjoying this one a lot so far!

Loved this book! Imagine you are giving a dinner party and an acquaintance arrives with a friend in tow. Then imagine that friend leaves the table and locks himself in your guest room. Especially in today‘s world what a media sensation! In Ali Smith fashion this hops between narratives- my favorites were May the old woman in a care home and Brooke the precocious 10 year old girl. Good on audio as well as I switched back and forth. 4⭐️#femmeuary

Ali Smith can take the ordinary #9to5 and turn it into to something almost magical. Her words and her characters swept me up into these strangely intertwined stories and left me with a smirking appreciation of life‘s devastatingly quirky mundanity.

#FierceFeb

Ali Smith nailed how I feel about going back to work (at a girls high school) on Monday 😬🙃

A dinner guest locks himself in a room and refuses to leave. The story is really about the people at that dinner and how their lives are connected to the man in the room. It‘s beautifully written. I can‘t wait to read Autumn. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The blurb says this is about a man locking himself in a bedroom during a dinner party. It's not. It's really about how four individuals experience and remember the world differently. They each have different memories about the man in the room - from long ago and tinted with nostalgia, recent but blurred by old age, young but obsessed with detail. A great exploration of human experience and how our understanding of the world and memories are shaped

Up next on audiobook! I read and loved her book Autumn, so am hoping this is just as good. I'm finding lots of good things on Hoopla lately.

This is a very weird book, but I am really enjoying it so far! It's a weird, but fun and entertaining read - definitely different. Let's see how I like it in the end.

I love that the cover is a David Hockney painting! I love his art.

Kicking off the first of a nine day vacation from work! Only solid plans so far are to eat and read and hang out with my husband and cat. So... perfect vacation, am I right? 👌🏻

Another one of which I had high hopes, but which turned out unsatisfying. A man, Miles, locks himself up in the house of the family Lee. We don't know why. In four parts four people are described who more or less know Miles. However, we learn nothing of his motives and neither about the family in whose home he stays. They seem quite strange, and interesting, as does Miles himself, but these lines are not worked out. Disappointing! #1001books

I've read some amazing books this year. Some have been masterpieces and some haven't but have touched me anyway. These are my 5-star reads #sofar

Two women writers who push the boundaries of narrative fiction. Two bright #yellowcovers.
#riotgrams @bookriot

SO MUCH PICK! Words fail me. See @vivastory 's review because it's brilliant, not to mention much more coherent than this.

I ended up rereading many portions as I went along just to put it all together. Talk about nuance! There was SO MUCH to pick up along the way and I loved every bit of it.

Fantastic! I've never read anything like it. 'But' and 'the' my favourite parts of the book. Looking forward to reading more Ali Smith. How are you getting on @saresmoore ?

"Everything is so neat it's a kind of proof, though he's not sure yet what of. The sizes of the chairs in the lounge, new to the backs of his legs, are a kind of proof. The foreign fall of the cloth on the table is proof. The dark wood furniture in the room is proof."

Memory, potentially unreliable narration, perspective & subject shifts, pages-long parenthetical reminiscences: Smith does it all with remarkable aplomb.

*Would he be testing whether he'd be missed / would such inversion mean he'd not exist?* this was interesting, because usually she was much ruder and cruder than she was being this morning. Also, it was quite unusual for her to ask questions. Questions demanded an answer, didn't they? They asked for a response.

Today's #readandeat I've just ate about 20 of these. Thankfully you don't get more in box as they are so addictive! #marchintoreading ❤️📚☕️

I'm not sure if the photo depicts it well, but I really appreciate the formatting of this edition. Narrow side margins and a fat one at the bottom mimic the cover design. It probably has nothing to do with the story, but it's neat. Are your editions similar, @DeborahSmall & @vivastory ?

Genevieve Lee is absolutely despicable and yet totally believable.

I meant to post this yesterday, but got caught up!

@vivastory @saresmoore getting ready to start this ❤️👍🏻

I've just read the first twenty pages of this and it's unexpected and dazzling. It's my first Ali Smith! Have you started reading yet, @vivastory & @DeborahSmall ?

Ali Smith understands

I ❤ Ali Smith. This is my favourite yet. During a dinner party with strangers Miles Garth locks himself in a bedroom for months. From there we catch poignant, fractured glimpses of his life (and their own) from people who have only glancingly touched it. It begs the question by what and by whom can we truly be known? The book is just so FULL. Full of ideas and wordplay, full of compassion, and sadness and joy. Quietly devastating and yet...

I just placed an order via AbeBooks with some Valentine's Day money (Thanks, Mom!) and almost 100% of the credit/blame can be shared by @shawnmooney and @vivastory . Thanks to you both for being readers, thinkers, and sharers of wisdom!

Okay, I'll stop gushing all over Litsy now.

didn't realize how both of these books are yellow and texty until looking through my books today. #booktober #yellow #textonlycover