Welcome to Litsy!

Yes,the story drew me in&I wanted to know what would happen next.Yes,it‘s kind of original&clever.But then the story veers off into Stasi recruiting methods&East German punk music&the plot gets weird&the main character‘s descent into paranoia world&identity bla,nervous breakdown&always Kleist committing suicide & right wing& liberal intellectuals & Trump &the narrator‘s privilege&inability to be a father&husband&the whining about it… no,nope,no

@Cinfhen you asked what I ended up purchasing at the audible sale. 🤩 I‘m focusing my purchases on fiction because my library‘s nonfiction is 🔥🔥 but I may take a peek at the nonfiction titles if I have time. 👍🏻

What an amazing #SSS Package! I love everything. The coffee, the book sleeve, the mug! Everything is wonderful I am so glad I got such a great swap match @ImperfectCJ Thank you so much for everything!

Read the sample of this on Kindle, and am a bit undecided whether or not to continue. Very nicely written, but somehow it's not really grabbing me. Anyone have any views on it? Should I persevere?

#12Booksof2021

Thanks for the tag @Andrew65 ! 😊

This was my favorite book read in January ‘21. I found it to be unsettling and thought provoking. A writer takes a three month residency in Berlin and proceeds to be pulled into madness...but, to paraphrase Alice in Wonderland, aren‘t we all mad here?

The narrator of this bizarre novel reflects well the feeling many of us have that the world is growing increasingly insane, that those holding the principles of openness, equality, and hospitality are being quietly overwhelmed by those who hold beliefs we assumed quelled in 1945, or at least in 1989. Kunzru captures well this feeling that dark forces are gathering under our complacent noses as what once seemed paranoid delusion becomes reality.

Today was the last quarterfinal: Leave the World Behind was up against Red Pill in the #ToB21 and against The Vanishing Half in the #LitsyToB21. In our tournament Leave is the winner, in the offical one Red Pill (surprisingly!) moves on.

‼️Now it's time to fill out our brackets for the two semifinals! Please do so today, since tomorrow the first match will be held. ‼️

Use this form please: https://forms.gle/SEQEAUYuc9uF4frC6

The Resisters won the play-in's and met The Vanishing Half today in the Opening Round of our #LitsyToB21. The marjority voted for The Vanishing Half, so that's the one entering our Quarterfinals.
In the real #ToB21 however, The Vanishing Half was up against Red Pill. The latter won, so Red Pill will enter the Quarterfinals in the real tournament while in ours it didn't even make it into the tournament at all. Interesting!!

"I believe everyone has a place, a mental laboratory where we experiment with thoughts that are too strange or fragile to expose. I believe that we need to preserve it, in order to feel human. It is shrinking, its scope reduced by technologies of prediction and control, by social media‘s sinister injunction to share."

"As I picked my way along the cliff path, the sun appeared out of the clouds, striking the sea with a great silent clang."

"A fine blanket of gray cloud covered the sky and I was no more than a thin skin over a hollow, a drum, a cave, my head aching, a metallic taste in my mouth."

"I always experience low-level panic when I‘m denied internet access, even if I have no immediate need for it."
Mood.

"An hour or so later, shaved and dressed, I went to the Workspace with the brittle jauntiness of a young revolutionary singing songs on his way to the gallows."

I am a #TOB21 #Completist! #litsyToB21 Finished by 10pm on the Ides of March. Weird fact: I usually do not read before sleep. I can never remember what I‘ve read when sleepy. What would I say about this and how do I rate? Giving it 4 slices of pie (no pie mentioned), I enjoyed the suspense and the skilled descriptions of both landscape and his mental state as he 👇

Another sleeping dog has a book posed nearby. #DogsofLitsy #Tob21
Realized I hadn‘t posted that I was reading this; hoping to finish tonight. I had very paranoid dreams last night. Pretty sure this had influence on that.

Yeah, that didn‘t last long. I don‘t really care enough to write a lot. I‘m just mad this is the play-in that got picked for #tob21. Seriously, The Resisters was so much better!

It‘s #TOB21 Time! Now I have more motivation to finish this. I‘m not far enough in to it yet. But it does scare me some, too. Am I “smart” enough for this?! #LitsyTOB21

I loved Kunzru's White Tears but am not sure how I feel about this one. It's a good commentary on the current political situation but I didn't find it a particularly enjoyable read.
#TournamentOfBooks #tob2021

This was my 4th and final book for #JoyousJanuary. Thanks @Andrew65 for hosting!

And another for #ShutdownReadathon. @Squidget

This book is a trip and Hari Kunzru is such a talented writer.

After finding the first two parts of the book really absorbing, I‘m having a tough time with the Anton section - the break from rationality seems to sudden to be believable. Just me?

A writer gets a fellowship for a retreat outside Berlin, but finds that he can‘t concentrate on his work and instead becomes obsessed with a show about violent but philosophical cops and the show‘s enigmatic creator.

Soooo... I kind of have a hard time understanding the hype about this book. The first half almost felt pointless and then it got better.

A little eerie was to listen to the ending a day before the 2020 election when the last scene of the book was reliving the 2016 election night through the main characters eyes.

Red Pill is an anxious narrative that is about many things, most significantly the decline of the narrator‘s mental stability in the face of the increasing compromise of liberal democracy. This is a hectic novel, littered with cultures and literary references. Although it doesn‘t always hang together perfectly Kunzru builds tension expertly throughout, especially through the motif of surveillance.

When the narrator of this absorbing novel receives a stipend to write at the Deuter Center near Berlin, he has no idea his stay will lead him down a rabbit hole of conspiracy that will threaten to unravel his life. Concluding with the 2016 US presidential election, Red Pill brilliantly captures the anxiety of an uncertain age. Maybe don't read this if you're prone to existential crisis; at least wait until the results of the next election are in.

4⭐ Tense and timely; I had a sense of paranoia and dread building as I read. It was also a strange and frustrating experience at times, because like the narrator, I was certain that something fairly diabolical was going on but could not quite put my finger on it. It was an unsettling, discomforting read, and reading about its narrator fumbling for meaning or a bigger picture felt all too familiar. (E-arc from publisher)