Welcome to Litsy!

Here‘s my January stack. This was a very good reading month. My favorite read of the month was This Is Happiness. What a perfect novel; I loved the writing and the way he wove the themes of light and reconciliation throughout.
Now… on to February at last!

Not pictured are audio reads:
🎧 Sense and Sensibility, Austen
🎧 Into the Uncut Grass, Noah
🎧 Ordinary Mysticism, Starr

Not the right moment. Ireland, small town, electrification. It didn‘t grab me.

This is a slow novel in the best possible way. Pages and pages dedicated to landscape and weather. Some very smart structural decisions that help conclude substories without distracting from the main story. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Next up. I‘ve read a lot of good reviews, including here on Litsy. I‘ve read so many great books already this summer. Moon Road, So Late In The Day, Tomb Sweeping, and Intimacies (Lucy Caldwell).

I will never be able to do justice to this novel. On the surface it‘s a very simple story about a 17 year old boy living in the West Coast of Ireland when the parish is getting electricity for the first time. However, it is so much more. If you read it, be prepared to not only enjoy the story and the wordsmithing, you will laugh and cry but you‘ll come away having your heart and soul somewhat healed. 5⭐️
@Suet624 @Gissy set in Ireland 🇮🇪

Soaked in symbolism and the most beautiful prose you can imagine, this lovely book is the opposite of a page-turner. It‘s a slow-down-and-savor, experience in all your senses kind of book. I loved it and wanted to highlight every other sentence. Highly recommend! Number13 for#24in2024 and my irl book club pick.

Springtime and a good book. This is happiness. 😀

@CBee thank you so much for this blast of love and happiness. I so appreciate your support. I look forward to reading all of these, and digging in to the snacks. I haven‘t ever tried spicy pistachios, but they sound delicious! I love Reeces, and the gnome is so cute! He‘s perched on my bookshelf now. Sietje enjoyed playing with the wrapping paper 🐶. You are so sweet. Thank you again. 💞

The shelves were well-stacked, the multitude of things that could go wrong arranged chasteningly under broad rubrics, Head, Ears, Nose & Throat, Eyes, Teeth, Joints. Because they were a sex that concurred with Aristotle, having more to them than the sum of their parts, in their own category: Women.

Furthest from the counter, as ordained by general backwardness in matters of the body, a small shelf: Men. Beside the Men, Animals.

...when the electricity did finally come, it was discovered that the 100-watt bulb was too bright for Faha. The instant garishness was too shocking. ....

Reality was appalling. It turned out Siney Dunne's fine head of hair was a wig, not even close in colour to the scruff of his neck, Mick King was an out-and-out and fairly unsubtle cheater at Forty-Five, and Marian McGlynn's healthy allure was in fact a caked make-up the colour of red turf ash.

In the same way that order of entrance into St Cecelia's was preordained, so too it was a given that men lost interest once the service climaxed. Mossie Pender was always the first to leave. Mossie had reached the age when he no longer held dominion over his bladder, and in the last moments of Mass, host unmelted on his tongue, rushed from St Cecelia's into Ryan's next door....

To gain some perspective on the length of this audiobook, I listened to it while weeding & laying 50+ bags of mulch to two large beds that hadn‘t been tended at all for 5 years and prepped & painted our library room. 😳

This is Irish story telling at its best. A young man comes of age in a village when electricity is promised to be the second coming. However, the value of life, family, community & love doesn‘t depend on electric illumination.

#BookReport 15/23

The tagged book was the least favorite this week. I really enjoyed Ben and I‘m a Fan but nothing could compete with Three. What a terrific book. My second week in a row with a 5⭐️ read. Lucky me!

Electricity comes to a small Irish parish in the 1950s. The man delivering it is Christy, a man with a mission. Or two actually. He finds company in the young Noe, a boy on the brink of adulthood - with its uncertainties.
To me this book is way too long. I love Niall Williams writing and I was eager to follow the plot but the endlessly adding of details worked so distracting that I found myself skimming pages until the story continued. #Roll100

This story of a fictional town in Ireland as it prepares for electricity to be installed in the town is also a story about a stranger coming to town to ask for forgiveness. The story is told so beautifully and the writing takes time to take in. This is not a quick read. It reminded me of my father of Irish descent telling stories - endlessly adding details that ultimately make the story so much better.

#WeeklyForecast 14/23

I just finished Birnam Wood and now have to deal with a book hangover. So what to read next.

I chose Notes on Grief, which I think will feel very close to home. I also chose a Persephone because you can‘t go wrong with them. The tagged book is for #Roll100 and I look forward to it because I loved History of the Rain.

Often I feel such gratitude for my reading life. Today - despite the snowstorm raging outside on March 31st! - I feel so grateful to be reading these two books at the same time. Williams‘ writing is so detailed and gorgeous and White‘s writing is so fanciful and fun. We readers are so lucky to have such wonderful offerings. Many thanks to @AnnieMcC for the Williams recommendation and thanks to @AvidReader25 and @BkClubCare for #OAFkingalong.

A beautifully written book about a fictional town in Ireland in the 1950's. I loved everything about this book except that I had to hurry through the last 1/3 of book to get it back to the library on time. I will be reserving it again to finish it the way it deserves to be read, slowly and patiently.

Read this for a book club. A glacially paced literary read told from the perspective of a senior Noel reflecting of his time spent in the fictional Irish town of Faha in the 1950's. As the traditional village prepares for the modern age of electrification, it's about the people, the families, and friendships found in this coming age story. Beautifully written with lyrical prose and plentiful with themes, it still needs editing in storytelling.

This book came highly recommended. This is just in the Epigraph and already I am looking forward to diving in. A new book,a quiet Sunday morning, a hot cup of coffee. Bliss.

Tagged book is on my TBR shelf. Tolstoy knew where happiness can be found. This perfectly lists some of the things I am most grateful for.

#Gratitude

This has come very highly recommended. Probably will check it out! Has anyone read it and loved it too?

This book isn‘t big on plot but if you are a lover of language, this is your next read. The writing is lovely. Carefully crafted word by word- sometimes funny, sometimes profound and always beautiful. I was so distracted by the language I would have to re-read the page because I hadn‘t paid any attention to what was going on. 😆

I received this book as a gift for my upcoming birthday! How lovely is that?!

Well-woven, multi-threaded tale of a young man at his grandparent's home in rural Ireland. I listened to the audio book & enjoyed it very much.

I haven‘t been a good reader lately — or anything -er, since that implies a verb. 🙈 So, I‘ve got to pause the book I started (tagged), which was lovely (the little bit I read, anyway!), to crack open my Book Club book.

Starting over tonight with Evvie Drake Starts Over. It seems like a quick read, though, so hopefully I‘ll finish in time! 🤞🏻

“The shoes of all grandparents are inestimable mysteries, hold them in your hand and they are strange and tender somehow.”

Pictured are me & my Mom with my Grandma at my wedding. Inexplicably, my Grandma is holding her own shoe. 😅🤷‍♀️ (She wasn‘t doing super-well by this point & she passed away about 6 months later...but she was so happy & proud that day.)

“The known world was not so circumscribed then nor knowledge equated with facts. Story was a kind of human binding. I can‘t explain it any better than that. There was telling everywhere. Because there were fewer sources of where to find out anything, there was more listening.”

Most recent #LibraryHaul — with an @erinreads haul as the cherry on top!

A ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ read for me and a book I will be recommending to those looking for a heartwarming and soul nourishing novel. Themes of storytelling, romantic and non romantic love, music, and landscape shape this beautiful tale of electricity coming to Faha, County Clare in Ireland. It is, truly, happiness!

#LitsyAtoZ, Letter T

"I sometimes think the worst thing a young person can feel is when you can find no answer to the question of what you are supposed to do with this life you've been given"... "I can now say that another version of that happens in old age, when it occurs to you that since you've lived this long you must have learned something, so you open you eyes before dawn and think: What is it that I've learned, what is it I want to say?"

"The known world was not so circumscribed then nor knowledge equated with facts. Story was a kind of human binding. I can't explain it any better than that. There was telling everywhere. Because there were fewer sources of where to find out anything, there was more listening."

I loved this book. A story about electricity arriving to a small village in Ireland (but really about so much more). The writing was phenomenal and actually quite comedic. I can‘t remember how this book ended up on my TBR but I‘m so glad it did and so grateful to #bookspinbonanza for the impetus to pick it up. Book 3 done. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Onto book 3 of #bookspinbonanza and just blown away by the writing! I can‘t remember how this book ended up on my TBR but grateful (so far!) that it did!

You would be hard-pressed to find anything more Irish than this gem of a novel.It‘s a story about electricity coming to a rural Irish village in the late 1950s.But the beauty of the story lies not in the exact details of what happened but in the way in which it is told.This story is told with joy, heartbreak, humor, warmth, and a deep reverence for people and places that now only exist in our memories.Photo is from my own trip to Ireland in 2007.

I love this quote at the intro to this book. Apologies for the dog hair on the screen . . .

I adored this book. It was charming, witty, and wise. The writing was rich and all the characters seemed alive. This is ultimately a book about the changes in the course of a life that are pivotal, even though you don‘t often know that at the time. Set in a small Irish village, a young man leaves seminary school and comes to live with his grandparents following his mother‘s death. He befriends an older man who is there to rekindle a lost love.👇🏻