Welcome to Litsy!

Zsuzsi Gartner, author of the story collection with the excellent title “Better Living Through Plastic Explosives“, has published a debut novel with a narrator that we see too little of. Lucy, a professional & a mother who does not feel guilt about the feelings she has towards her daughter who now lives with her ex-husband. Since the death of her cousin, & best friend, Zoltan the narrator has become a magnet for the off-beat & occasionally (CONT)

I am posting one book per day from my to-be-read collection. No description and providing no reason for wanting to read it, I just do. Some will be old, some will be new - don‘t judge me I have a lot of books.
Join the fun if you want. This is day 214.
#bookstoread
#tbrpile
#bookstagram

Thanks Leah ❤️I‘m thrilled to get a copy of Beguiling ( it is impossible to get from here .... unless you have nice friends in the right places ! And I look forward to Cluny Brown. Maple crunch chocolate 👌🏻Book 🧦 socks 😁, stickers & bookmarks.. I‘m completely spoilt! Thankyou so very much my lovely friend XXX Cathy @LeahBergen

Thanks for the Tag @TrishB 😘

1. I do keep a list of books to buy ... and every week I decide which one I might go for. Always lovely to know there is something in the post , especially these days
2. No , but I was going to pre-order The Beguiling ( hard to track down )
Also I want to order Good Company by Cynthia D‘Aprix Sweeney ( I really enjoyed The Nest ..

#TwoforTuesday @TheSpineView

I tag all who‘d like to join in 😘

Dark, very funny and very weird. I was immediately swept up in this bizarre tale of a mother who can‘t cope with motherhood, and to whom strangers keep confessing their deepest secrets. All of their stories eventually link together—I found myself flipping back to previous pages to ascertain details—and I felt the weight of grief by the end. #CanadianAuthor #LGBTQ

“So many people these days view death as a character in a Bizarro comic,” she said, “just another joker with a scythe who has to ring the doorbell like everyone else. Where is the respect for mortality?”

[…] may have been the best thing that ever happened to me. It triggered the confessions that added a dimension to my life otherwise undreamt of in philosophy. And it freed me, in the sense of freedom meaning nothing left to lose, although I would not have traded all my tomorrows for even a single yesterday or all the la-las and da-das in the world.

“Not everything is Julian‘s fault. Actually”—this was drawn out to its full four syllables, each one punctuated by a bullet with my initials scored on its casing—“nothing is Julian‘s fault.”
62 pounds of porcelain-skinned, coruscating disdain, sparking like a Catherine wheel & who could really blame her? People say adolescent girls tend to turn on their mothers. But could I really be considered her mother? (I am the eggmom, they are the eggmoms 👇

I‘ve long believed that people ought to have licences for having children. It‘s more difficult, more dangerous, and there‘s more potential for wholesale destruction than with driving or flying a plane. The shocking negligence with which we procreate!

(Internet photo of author)

He barked at anything that moved, including dust motes, targeting them with his quivering eyes as if each one were a personal enemy. Poor little creature had all the signs of PTSD. He had seen the enemy and the enemy was us.

(Photo is from the book Knitting with Icelandic Wool.)

St Gobnait of County Cork, patron saint of bees, was featured in stained glass. She had released a swarm to fend off raiders—nature weaponized.

(Internet photo of a window in Honan Chapel.)

There were things that had flown out of my mouth on the trip home that don‘t bear repeating. The flight attendant actually asked Julian, as he sat placating the baby on his lap, “Is this woman bothering you?” He replied, “This woman is my wife.” Were sadder words ever spoken by a man?

There‘s a poster from the 70s that had unicorns on it & an anonymous quote used to console the broken-hearted: “If you love something, let it go. If it comes back, it‘s yours. If it doesn‘t, it never was.”
Maybe it‘s like that with unicorns & boyfriends, but words, once loosed into the world, become wild animals.
(Internet image)

A Catholic school is a petri dish of ritual run amok. There was one nun at Sacred Heart who made the sign of the cross whenever a siren Dopplered by, which, due to the school being situated a block from a fire hall, was fairly often. She was regarded as the most pious of all the sisters. [“Today she‘d be diagnosed with OCD,” I said …]

“Give me my epidural!” I hollered. “I want my fucking epidural!” But it was a rapid-fire labour & too late for even a pathetic little extra-strength Tylenol.
“I‘m going to roar like a lion,” I announced in an oddly calm & determined voice to the sweaty & excited faces around me. And I did. So ferociously the women in the fertility clinic in the next wing of the hospital fled en masse. All the impala of the Serengeti ran for cover. The MGM lion 👇

‘Be kind whenever possible,‘ the 14th Dalai Lama wrote. ‘It is always possible.‘
But not fucking easy. Although I‘m sure he knew that all too well or he wouldn‘t have issued the challenge.

I‘d never seen one of these cars until I suddenly owned one, but all at once the streets & parking lots of my hometown teemed with these sad-sack Spirits. More than once I put my key into the lock of a car that wasn‘t mine & was startled, as if I‘d glimpsed myself in another time & place, in a parallel dimension.
(Internet photo)

In fact, I felt chosen. St Lucy.
Julian used to call me that, kidding of course. St Lucy of that-time-of-the-month. St Lucy, patron saint of people terrified of expired best-before dates. St Lucy who sends down a plague of expletives on drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians alike. An equal opportunity crank.