Welcome to Litsy!

I relished this collection of essays, which felt conversational, as Laing brings to the forefront discussions on how art can and should change the world and create an openness to new ideas. (Sorry for the unrelated picture, but my cat desires my attention now.)

Even when she‘s writing about strange, or obscure subjects, her writing is so good it pulls you along

"In the old days, art had meant things; objects to which the viewer pays solemn homage. But what if art could also be ideas, expressed by way of acts, events in time that left minimal traces in the world? Maybe a person could be a work of art. Maybe you didn‘t need a gallery at all. Maybe art could take place in the street, or in a field. Maybe it only came into being with the viewer‘s presence, and maybe it didn‘t require witnesses at all."

"We‘re so often told that art can‘t really change anything. But I think it can. It shapes our ethical landscapes; it opens us to the interior lives of others. It is a training ground for possibility. It makes plain inequalities, and it offers other ways of living. Don‘t you want it, to be impregnate with all that light? And what will happen if you are?"

I love Olivia Laing‘s style and essays. I loved her style of writing here so so much, including when it was about artists I don‘t know or like loads. She makes me feel like part of an elegant yet thoughtful contemplative literati and I really hope she‘s what I‘m like when I‘m that age!

#nfn2020 @Clwojick +20

Today‘s TIL for #nfn2020 is that the tagged book by Olivia Laing has introduced me to Georgia O‘Keeffe‘s art and I‘m completely obsessed with it. I knew that there was an American artist with that name but I‘d never known what she painted. Olivia Laing‘s essay about her life and work has made me desperate to learn more! @Clwojick +5

Short, brilliant essays about art and artists. David Wojnarowicz‘s disturbing photo on the cover should alert readers that Olivia Laing is not a shrinking flower. She writes with admiration about art that matters and makes clear WHY it matters. I listened to the #audiobook narrated by Sophie Aldred. She switches from British English to American/French/Russian/etc accents for quoted passages, which gets annoying.

Maggie Nelson is one of the most electrifying writers in America today, among the sharpest and most supple thinkers of her generation. Born in 1973, she has so far this century produced 9 books, knitting together what might, in heavier hands, be abstruse theory and humid confession, to create an exhilarating new language for considering both the messiness of life and the meanings of art.
(From Olivia Laing‘s review of The Argonauts in 2015)

“Art is one of the prime ways we have of opening ourselves and going beyond ourselves.” –Ali Smith

Is gardening an art form? If it is, it‘s the kind of art I like: embedded in the material, nearly domestic, subject to happenstance and weather.

For our time is the passing of a shadow and our lives will run like sparks through stubble. –Derek Jarman

We‘re so often told that art can‘t really change anything, but I think it can. It shapes our ethical landscapes. It opens us to the interior lives of others. It is a training ground for possibility. It makes plain inequalities and it offers other ways of living.

#BookReport #WeeklyForecast

Just finished Bluebird, Bluebird and have put the next book on hold.

I‘m still reading a chapter a day of P&P and really enjoying that

I‘ve started Funny Weather and hope to finish this week. I love Laing‘s writing

Next up is Readhead by the Side of the Road and I hope to get a start on The Shadow King. Both books are due back at the library next Monday.

I also want to start looting my audio again after a break.

I‘ve known Smith since I was seventeen (her partner is my cousin). In the 1990s we used to write each other letters. Recently I unearthed a blurry photograph she sent me twenty years ago of a cat‘s tail dangling over a sofa. ‘I have a long-term plan to write a novella for each season,‘ she‘d written on the back. ‘It seems to me the seasons are so gifted to us that it‘s a kind of duty, a very nice one.‘

There was no weekly forecast from me last week, but this week I‘ve a combined #BookReport and #WeeklyForecast

I finished The Five before work this morning and will start the tagged book.

I continue reading P&P a chapter a day.

I‘m struggling with How Much of These Hills is Gold. I read a 100 p last week in a 270p book, normally I would have finished in a couple of days. I feel like this is my mantra these days, that I want to bail on books.

I so wish I could write as well as Olivia Laing! I love how her brain processes people, places and things. Beautiful essays. 🥰 A true piece of art.

So these are the books I‘ve bought since March. Most of these are actually bought in the bookstores

The bottom to on the left was bought in March. All the books on the right was bought in April. The three books in the middle on the left was bought in May. The top three on the left are the books I‘ve bought so far this June.

I‘ve already red two of these, and hope I read more of these in the not so distant future.