Riverine: A Memoir from Anywhere but Here | 
bailedI didn't get far with this one. I need to be grabbed and pulled in by memoirs as well as the fiction I read. Just didn't happen with this one. Perhaps I don't have the patience for a slower pace after recent favorite memoirs like The Fact of a Body and The Red Parts🤓
panSomething about this author just rubbed me the wrong way throughout this book--though there was some good stuff in the final hour. Oh well.
Tomorrow is my birthday. We went to Half Price Books last night for some birthday books and I got a few books and some reading glasses! I'm of a certain age now where I have to stash my readers around the house like a squirrel! 🎂🎁🎉👓
Cracking open the first book of 2017. What are you starting the year with?? #thereadingwomen
I've been in a bit of a slump the past few months, picked up some steam with some fluffy reads, and ready to dive into this. Also, I really love this cover.
Who needs sleep? 😝📚💗
Today's plans. 💕
(Discovered a while ago on the Oblong Bookstore's FB page - if you know the artist, please share their name in the comments!)
pickThis is a challenging book, because the chapters in this memoir are really meandering essays where the author follows digressions and inserts observations that are only tangentially related to whatever seemed to be the main points. That said, these braided essays do reward the reader. This memoir --intimate and introspective-- makes a great companion and foil to Hillbilly Elegy, a wider-read memoir that generalizes way too much. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
In Riverine, memoirist Angela Palm embraces the braided essay as a form that explicitly and purposefully encompasses digressions and contradictions. As a reader, you have to be okay with just following along and trusting the experience will indeed be worth it. I just wish this explanation had been at the beginning of the book and not the end; I wouldn't have been surprised by all the meanderings in the text.
#Septimus wants attention 😜#catsofLitsy
On the preeminence of corn, in the US in general and in her community in particular (as the author grew up in Indiana farm country and once worked as a corn picker.)
About the attitudes of the memoirist's parents (and community) when migrant workers of Latino descent arrived in the late 1990s to rural Indiana. As recent events show, attitudes have not changed much, have they? 😢
Why is it that adults are obsessed with girls' bodies?!?
so-soSo well-written, but it would take me more than one read to catch all the nuances of her writing. While it is a good read, I can't see reading it again.
Like Harlow's monkeys, I would have curled up with a wire doll if I thought it would love me back.
Only a few more days until the #readathon! I know I'm excited. It's a great chance to check out a few #ScaryReads and knock a few books off your #AllHallowsRead TBR. And I hear @DeweysReadathon is trusting their Litsy account to a lunatic that day. (SPOILER: It's me.) 📚🤘🏻🎉
so-soI found this book a bit frustrating. It is a braided essay of a memoir. The sections about her childhood friend/love Corey are the strongest: full, rich, emotional, and heart-rending. Some of the other thoughts are quite good, but others weigh down the story, making me want to skim past them. I would have preferred a narrative more filled with her life with and without Corey; it would have been stronger.
"Books, though, had never shut me out or made me feel like I didn't belong." Truth!
I had a panic today when my nook crashed and stayed down for 30 minutes. 😱 I was planning an emergency B&N trip (and it's not close) to get a new one, but thank goodness it is back up (wipes forehead with hand). 😃 I wasn't sure about this one in the first few pages, but the end of the first chapter convinced me to keep going.
Leaving my computer (and phone!) at home and headed to Vermont for the weekend with my husband, my dog, and this book. Can't wait! #harveyandbooks
🔶RIVERINE by Angela Palm🔶Pub date: 8/16/16!🔶We're tapping our toes with excitement!🔶
pickPalm knows how to write creative nonfiction. No question. At first I didn't like the navel-gazing feel of the narrative, but I kept reading and discovered what she had done structurally. She wowed my socks off (considering this is her first book). And seriously, rural childhood in a riverbed, teenage angst, murder, what's not to like? I can't wait to see what she writes in the future. Def worth of the Graywolf nonfiction prize of 2014. | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
⬆️ Book theme in a nutshell. #memoir
A memoir of rural Indiana and murder.
Behold the beauty of my #24in48 #readathon prize! Thank you so much @Litsy @Graywolfpress and @24in48 🎉🍾🤓📚
Got my winnings from the 24 in 48 giveaway!! Thank you again
I just can't wait any longer to start this book!! I am throwing caution to the wind, and the schedule of books I need read by a certain date, and just starting this beauty. 😘
pickBeautiful and evocative memoir. Palm focuses on how her childhood environment shaped herself as opposed to her friend Corey. The strength of the writing fades a bit in the last 50 pages but overall it is a very vivid and compelling work.
"The girl, our girl, makes it out of the riverbed, but she carries traces of brown water in her lungs and sediment in her pockets so she knows the river is still there, despite all her moving on."--RIVERINE by Angela Palm.
Pub date: 8/16/16
Another giveaway from @Litsy thanks to @Graywolfpress and check out the Hour 36 post on www.24in48.com. #24in48
This giveaway is brought to you by RIVERINE, the winner of the Graywolf nonfiction prize, from @Graywolfpress !!
For a chance to win this memoir, share one of your favorite bookish quotes on Litsy. Be sure to tag us and use #24in48 and #readathon so we can find your post! Three winners will be chosen at 4PM EST. May the odds be ever in your favor!
(🎉Congrats to the winners of our last giveaway, @Sharanya @Treatyoshelf @AKinderman !!!🎉)
