Welcome to Litsy!

This book is a very thought-provoking look at call-out culture & generally just being extremely online. There is a loose plot about an unnamed female protagonist and her sister‘s pregnancy, but it is very loosely woven. In general this book is much more atmospheric and wanders between little instances that create a general vibe. If you have qualms about internet generations and cancel culture, & you don‘t need a plot-driven book, this is for you!

Lockwood is exceptionally witty, but this book isn't for everyone. It consists of very short paragraphs, reflecting the way that the internet has diminished our attention spans. There's only a very slight narrative, but the protagonist--like a character in a Greek tragedy--gains wisdom through suffering. I admire it more than I enjoyed it.

Rather than describe being Very Online, Lockwood inhabits it. The prose is very funny, but a little depressing even for someone who spends a fair amount of his time on Twitter.

#12booksof2022 June

An ok reading month, but i was surprised how much I got into this book and how much I continued to think about it afterwards.

Part of me wonders if I didn‘t give this book enough of a chance because work has been stressful. I enjoyed the internet culture bits… the rest was a little unexpected. #book92of2022

In Lockwood‘s book, going on the Internet is called “opening the portal.” The narrator seems to have built a professional life there as a humor writer, until a new arrival calls her back through the door. A baby born with Proteus Syndrome, too rare for both the physical and digital world, transcends both places like the cover‘s circular rainbow, calling everyone nearby to attention and appearing as a kind of short-lived miracle.

Library stack. 🥰

First of all, wow.. Lockwood is a master of the poetry craft. She can sculpt her sentences incisively to cut through the gristle & straight to the core of what she's trying to say. And she's witty to boot.

Part 1 is a blistering critique of the Internet age that still acknowledges that things were shittier 100 years ago. Part 2 is a short story about love and grief.

The two parts don't belong together. A stunning but ultimately incohesive work.

Next up!

You reckon this counts as "a social horror"? ?

So far this is reading like clever prose poetry.

#AlphabetGame One of the most memorable and affecting books I‘ve read in a very long time. Have you played yet @Allylu ??!

Lockwood is fantastic at capturing the fragmented, crushing feeling of being terminally online. I found the second half, in which a child she loves is extremely sick, hugely moving. But this book just wasn‘t for me, because I found the first half so exhausting- short, snappy paragraphs about the ‘portal‘ which didn‘t advance a plot, and at times felt like they were included just to be witty. I‘m sure this was the point, but I found it tough.

This wss a Booker Prize Winner; however, I just couldn't get into it. It was beautifully written, and I enjoyed how Lockwood described social media, known as the Portal in the book. It's when she starts describing real life that I couldn't connect the two halves of the book.
#JubilantJuly @Andrew65

I read this a bit ago and oddly, it was all I talked about. I've written here before about loving novels written by poets and this is absolutely the gold standard of that statement. Lockwood begins this novel by basically synthesizing the whole of the internet (or Twitter, at the very least) and ends by crushing your soul with the brutality of a very real family tragedy. Read it and feel things. Your empathy muscles will grow three sizes.

Oh, no. I didn‘t read the trigger warnings, so this is on me; this book is about both modern life being at the mercy of social media, and also about a terminal pregnancy. Be warned, folks, and don‘t read in public!

My kitty and I are listening to this on the back porch and watching the rain. The meta-ness and the feeling like I‘m listening to a series of twitter posts is a bit mind-bending. I‘m impressed by the format but unsure if I have the attention span for so much randomness! It‘s interesting…

This novel is strange, modern, and thoughtful. A spare and raw examination of “the portal” (social media), it is truth telling at a whole new level. Often crass, it is ultimately empathetic, emotional, and good. This book is one of a kind! #BookspinBingo @TheAromaofBooks #Blackout

Trying to finish this today to #blackout my #BookspinBingo board for June! Weird and kinda wonderful.

This is the library book club choice for July.
The cover is so gentle, reminds me of the view from the plane.
I'm unsure what it's really about... ivecread a few pages and feel clueless!

Twitter personality wrote a Twitter novel. And it works. It‘s creative, powerful and, I thought, confusing to our mental senses. A spray of information through bitesized expressions with meaning, each contained and concluded; and they‘re insightful, and they go rushing by in a flurry of not-really-random information. And there is a story within, broken up and unfocused by the chatter and yet patently there. I‘ve been mentally twirling this one. 👇

Bought a Kindle version and started this yesterday evening. So far a hundred pages of mind trapped in Facebook or some other social media (… like 🙄🥺 this? Surely never.) I‘m enjoying it but ready for that second part a lot of reviews talk about. Oh - with this I will complete last year‘s Booker longlist.

I an so looking forward to trying these recipes, @Julsmarshall! I love icebox cookies and risotto! And I;m excited to try some new-to-me Texan food. 😍

I've had my eye on this book for a while, and (if I can wait that long) might save the it for my next plane ride .

#RecipeSwap @Bennett

Although at times hard to follow, No One is Talking About This is a unique read. Part one was a clever and disheartening depiction of our current time and part two was a heartbreaking story of loss.

Very different to anything I have read. Took a while to get into and almost gave up but glad I didn‘t.
I should have read the blurb first , I think that may have helped.
Her subtle critic of the medical system in the US rang true for me.
So much in this book when I think about it.
Few words that say so much.

This book was a challenge to read. It‘s not written in a standard prose style and it‘s alarmingly true/real considering the recent news with the American Supreme Court‘s leaked document re: Roe vs Wade and politics in Ohio. It‘s good. It was just hard.

I just couldn't so it. Reading is my escape this book put me directly in the pages of social media. I think it could probably be a fantastic book but for my mental well being I bailed.

* pic of my front door and my bobble head gnome. Both decorated by my daughter. She wiped mud all over the door and spray painted the gnome with red pain. She is 10.

May the 4th Be With You

This cover makes me think of Oprah

WTF was that I just read 😱😢?

First half felt like I was running. Fast paced; words tripping over themselves. Second half like a hallucination or a really bad dream.

Some clever, poignant stuff here about how we increasingly live our lives online. I don‘t do twitter, but I ‘do‘ just about everything else.

I am confronted, disturbed and self-conscious. So much provocation in one little book. ☄️

This book is freaking me TF out 😱. #currentlyreading

(The white-out at the beginning is an attempt to avoid a ‘spoiler‘)

I was blown away by this book and read the last quarter or so through a tear-soaked haze. I had to sit with it awhile; in some ways, I feel like I'm still gathering my thoughts. This short space seems insufficient for a review of a book that felt like a major reading experience: a meditation on consciousness; on lives both real and virtual; on blithe irony vs fierce love and loss, deep grief and profound joy; the huge shifts in tiny moments.

Being in a month-long reading slump certainly didn't slow me down when it came to acquiring new titles! Now that I feel like I'm getting back into the swing of things, here are a few I plan to start soon. Any favorites among the selection here? #ReadingPlans

The internet. Probably the most profound existential enigma of our times. A tool to be both productive and counterproductive. It is such a literal manifestation of a juxtaposition that it transcends the grammatical realm of a metaphor....(continued in comments)

Perfectly captures the weirdness of Twitter and the gear shift between Part 1's perceptive humour and Part 2's real-world tragedy is masterfully handled.

“A minute means something to her, more than it means to us. We don‘t know how long she has-I can give them to her, I can give her my minutes.” Then, almost angrily, “What was I doing with them before?”
This quote sums up this book to me. The first half of the book is about how superficial and disconnected our lives have become online. The second half is about being connected and present in real life.
It‘s concerning how much time I can waste ⬇️

Another contender for our tournament is No One is Talking About This, this year's favorite book of Cindy, Helen, Sarah and Jessica. Although 6 of us preferred Several People are Typing, the Lockwood is our winner today - as it is in the real #ToB22.

At the eleventh hour, I am a #tob22 completist! I‘ve never read every one before; I generally have one book I dislike so much I bail. I hung in this year but I found that I was onto something with my decision not to finish this one during #camptob. For me it was a big mishmash of words and thoughts that didn‘t add up to anything much. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Still, so excited for tomorrow, woohoo! 🙂

Strange. Very strange. I‘m glad I read it though.

I'm not sure how I feel about this #ToB22 book. Part 1 was all over the place, while Part 2 was powerful and sad. I was intrigued by the author's stylistic choices but I also found the format frustrating at times.

#BookSpinBingo @TheAromaofBooks

#ToB2022 #ToB22

I've seen lots of mixed reviews on this book, but for me, it ended up being one of my favorites so far of the year. I can understand the division of reviews though because of how it's written.

The first part almost felt like a fever dream to me with the snippets from the portal. I'm not a person who uses social media much, other than Litsy, but while reading it felt like I had been sucked into an endless world of clicking.
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My family get me 🥰📚🙏. This birthday stack is from my husband and son. And a little free library that I‘ll be sure to photograph when it‘s installed out front. Squeeee!

@vivastory

Thank you, Scott for your generous gift. 😁 I was completely surprised. It's raining/sleeting outside, so I'm making hot cocoa for my new mug and going to settle in for the evening to read this book.

Holy heck, the juxtaposition of Parts 1 and 2 of this novel is devastating. The resolution/ending isn't as adept as it might be and I find the main character's relationship with her husband confusing, but the emotional evolution of the main character goes far in making up for any shortcomings. #ToB2022

Lockwood is a poet. If you don't want lyrical, abstract, snapshot imagery and thought this won't be the book for you. The first half where our narrator is very much in the portal does make you feel sick and disoriented like too much screen time. And then in the second half things get real, in the way they only can if someone has experienced what actually occurs to the family in these pages.

What did we have a right to expect from this life? What were the terms of the contract?

After reading the almost chunkster, Fingersmith, it's time for a slenderer read.