Welcome to Litsy!

5 🌟 My Kobo says I spent 27.4 hours reading this epic masterpiece. Chock full of history and many generations of family saga - it‘s definitely my kind of book!! Gorgeous writing and impeccable translation. It took me just days shy of one month to read it. A worthwhile amount of time spent for sure. Of course now what do I read next??

Because your hands tremble and your heart is full of holes

This book is pretty great, and the view isn't bad, either 😏
The Eighth Life by Nino Hararischvili
It's an epic 900+ page tome that I'm trying to read very, very carefully so as not to break the spine. I picked it up at a used book sale, and it doesn't look like it's ever been opened or read.

My first completed read of 2024 is a 5🌟!
Oof, this book! It feels wrong to say I enjoyed 900+ pages about inter-generational trauma but I loved the many hours I spent with the various members of the Jashi family. And though it is a mighty tome, the only thing that slowed me down was trying to bench press it in bed of a night.

It's primarily set in the Caucasus/USSR throughout the 20th Century: you can probably supply your own trigger warnings.

I‘m having my best reading year yet! This book was amazing! Sometimes, the historical parts lost me a little bit, but I understand this was a needed thread to stitch this story.

I‘m glad I joined a buddy read for this (had never heard about this book before), and the discussions every Sunday have been so enriching.

Please read this! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Joined a buddy read for this masterpiece of a book!

#nationalchocolateday @dabbe

Favourite is dark chocolate, but I love the strawberry/orange cremes as well, and also mint. After Eights are VERY dangerous!

I don't eat any specific Halloween food!

Staying with a friend. This is her bookshelf... how many out of 10 shall we give her? 🤔😄

I have changed this list so many times! I am reading The Eighth Life for the March of the Mammoths. The Secret History for the Buzzword challange. The Gracekeepers from my TBR Jar. The Strays for the Simon Savage prompt. I hope the #bookspin will double up one of these!! @TheAromaofBooks

#12Booksof2022 @Andrew65
My pick for February is a no brainer. Though definitely a chunkster, this book was a top read for me this year. The perspective from a life lived in ways so different from my experience was something to ponder for a long time. I highly recommend

#AlphabetGame #LetterE

I knew I was reading a new favorite by the first page, and I‘m so excited about her new novel coming out this fall.

An other contender is Excellent Women by Barbara Prym. This was my first Prym, but it won‘t be my last.

I‘m a sucker for books set in Russia. Throw in a handful of magical realism and I‘m sold!

#LetterE
#AlphabetGame
@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

I'm always hesitant to claim a book as "one of the best I've ever read", as I've read so many great books, however this book truly deserves the title. What a phenomenal story this has been! A heartwarming and heartbreaking story of Soviet Georgia, from WW1 until the country breaks from the Soviet Union, focused on the impact on one family over many generations. I was absolutely hooked from the very first page. Brilliant!

This book came highly recommended. I waited almost 4 weeks for it to arrive. Now I'm ready for this almost 1000 page book. I do love Big Books 💜🤩

Way to go, Amy! (Special props for tacking this chunkster in paper. My husband insists that my current 1,000+-page chunkster “doesn't really count“ because I'm reading it on my tablet. In his view, you get all the points for carrying this one around for several months. 🙂 )

@AmyG
#ChunksterChallenge2022

Way to go, @MaureenMc! Another chunkster toppled in the #ChunksterChallenge2022!

#SharreadsReadathon book1
This was a chunskster!! 1000 plus pages, but once it draws you in, you'll be captured. From Stasia to her great granddaughter Niza the story of the generations is told in the setting of the Russian revolution forward. The family lives in Georgia where the family sells sweets using a secret chocolate recipe. As the years pass the son of the chocolatier becomes a high ranking official in the Soviet union. ⬇️

This novel is the definition of epic, covering hundreds of years of Georgian history through the lens of a single family. Cruelty, brutality, & much loss, but also love, duty, and a touch of magic. The prose was beautiful; kudos to the translator(s).
And with that, I‘ve completed my #chunksterchallenge2022! Woot!

A bit late, but better late than never, as they say. 😆
💖No Valentine‘s pics this year, so I‘m sharing a pic of my daughter reading aloud to her fish, Olaf. 😁
💙Tagged my current read, which is for #Chunksterchallenge. Definite pick so far!
🖤 Today I‘m grateful my daughter only has a half-day of school, as we‘re expecting freezing rain & snow. 😬
#wondrousWednesday

I‘ve set my Goodreads goal quite a bit lower than years past. I really want to focus on bigger books this year.

My word/theme for 2022 is Hope. 😊

I‘m definitely enjoying the tagged book!

#ThoughtfulThursday

Thanks for the tag @Crazeedi

1- Holding our nerve and selling our home in the city we‘ve always lived in to relocate to the country! This years challenge has been living with a degree of anxiety about the fragility of everything that I‘m not used to.
2- Tagged - fab fab fab !
3- For our family to be healthy and happy and stress levels to spike less often than they have in recent years!

#12Booksof2021 My most memorable read from March. Immersive family saga. A chunkster, but packed with drama. Have some hot chocolate handy.

I just finished my #doublespin for September - about 1000 pages! I read this with a group and never would have picked it up otherwise, but I gave it 4 stars. Very page turnery historical about Georgia/Soviet Union and generations of one family. @TheAromaofBooks

A 934-page sweeping historical romance on Georgia - the country. It basically covers the 20th century, opening around 1900 and closing around 2003, a pivotal and hopeful year for this place. I‘m not going to rave about this, as I was never carried away, but it‘s nicely written and I enjoyed it all, the vaguer first 2/3 in the Soviet shadow, and all the detail touches in the last 300 pages, especially as the Iron Curtain collapsed.

Cat doesn‘t believe me, but I am making some progress. I‘m up to about 1985.

Only 50 pages left of this 930 page tome! It's such a beautiful and emotional tapestry of a story! My fiancee snapped this pic of Rumpel and I taking a quick nap between chapters! Well, I was taking a nap; she was just waiting for me to keep reading to her! 😸💕📚 It's not the most flattering picture of me...🤣😂...but I had to share it with my littens! #catsoflitsy #littenkitten #rumpel

Getting my early morning reading in - when i do most of my reading. 15 hours into this one I‘m not quite halfway through (roughly 1958, Soviet Georgia. It started around 1900). It‘s one of four long-ish books I‘ve been reading this month and won‘t finish…which is ok, but also a little strange.

I'm on the home stretch of this book - just hit page 800, only 120 left to go! I am honestly just in awe of how much I love this story. You would think a generational story spanning a century could be a bit of a slog, but it's not! I have been entranced, captivated, and utterly engrossed with every single page. Takes place in Georgia (country not state) and has so much interesting history. I'm dreading the end because I don't want it to be over!

A few pages here. Just starting.

Finished at last! The best thing about this book was its lush, colourful cover. I did not love the content. The writing is quite pacy so I read it to the end - all 934 pages of it - but now I feel slightly grubby. I could have used my reading time on something less... I don‘t know? What‘s the equivalent of ”click-baity” for books?

#Georgia

A multicultural morning with an Icelandic-inspired breakfast of skyr, almond cream and blueberries, and a Georgian family saga translated from German. And South-American coffee.

I have just started The Eighth Life at last! It's been on my shelves for over a year, but it's so big I was keeping it for when I'm on holiday and at home, so I'd have time to read it, and not have to lug it around...

This story actually has many beginnings.

#FirstLineFridays, @ShyBookOwl

This book is amazing! It weaves over 100 years of Georgian history through the lives one extended family. It's full of drama and horrors, of emotions and activism. It is a book that gives you space to learn, to grieve, to reflect and to cry - not tears of sentimentality but ones triggered by human pain. It's full of human energy and Georgian landscapes. It has the smell of peaches and the waft of vodka.. I loved it!

So wonderful listening to the author talking around the context and background to her research and approach to writing women and writing recent history 👍🏼

Puppy‘s waking up and I want to read more! 😂

The book I‘m reading (tagged) has the theme of chocolate running through it - seems appropriate to crack open my very decadent anniversary box of Fortnum & Masons chocolate creams ( based on a 1930s recipe!) 🥳

Lockdown has forced me to swap my beloved activity of #readingonlocation for #eatingbooks !

My current read focuses on chocolate and the Baltic states - so made a Babka today to accompany a few afternoon chapters!

#storygraph

I‘ve been swept away by the intimacy of this book - such gorgeous writing on the human spirit. However, that has also made the hardship and sheer terror of war so hard to read. Need to step away for a bit. 😢

Thought whilst I‘m not leaving the house (so no backpack and bicycle) it was a good time to tackle all 930 pages of this #chunkster !