Welcome to Litsy!

After an auto mechanic shop opens in the main character's backyard, he embarks on an increasingly desperate series of attempts to get some peace from many varieties of noise in modernizing 1950s South American society. It's not as slapstick as it sounds - more like a very long short story with weird character quirks. You feel bad for the guy, but he also reveals himself to be a bit of an oddball, so that adds another dimension to the mix.

(Almost) Weekly Report

I've finally finished The Rainbow! Very dense writing. I've also read A World of Love and The Silentiary.

And because I'm me I have immediately started another big, difficult book. Also, always, trying to keep up with Clarissa.

It finally feels like spring - a day with beautiful sunshine and warm temperatures!

@BarbaraBB Thank you for the wonderful Christmas and Birthday books! I look forward to reading them for #ReadingtheAmericas2023!

Have a wonderful read of your holiday and Happy New Year!

#wondrouswednesday @Eggs

1. Scrabble is the #1 boardgame in our household. We also still do our daily Wordle.
2. Be outside! Not too hot or humid, and the bugs still haven't resurfaced.
3. Still haven't finished P&P, so I'll go with the tagged book.

Tagging anyone who hasn't answered yet! ✋️

"Hell is other people" is probably as good and succinct a summary as one can give for this novel. Having done my time in New York - which included a two-year stretch living across the street from a Greek nightclub, the street itself a heavily trafficked shortcut for cars headed for Queensboro Bridge - I had a visceral reaction to the MC's plight. Noise as both the inevitable symptom of living fully and the thing that makes life intolerable.

"That's the first time I've heard you make a joke. It's funny! We'll have fun with it tonight. Have to go now. I'll expect you at nine. Be there!"

And she hangs up.

Curious effect my jokes have: they're not laughed at when made, but will be lots of fun ten hours later. Also, it wasn't a joke.

Leila is floating around across the street.

She doesn't dispense with me entirely. She greets me with a wave of the hand, and it seems her lips even form a word or two, words of greeting. But she doesn't look at me the way I think a writer should be looked at.

I signed up for the NYRB annual subscription last year (not the bottom one, that was mine already!)
My TBR pile has grown as a result...