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In the tagged book, people are voting for the era they want their countries to return to. No good can come of this 😂. I wouldn't want to choose, but maybe other people have other ideas and want to play? If you do, I'd be curious to know which era for which country you'd like to live in 😁

#Bulgaria

What a strange read but one I keep thinking about. When a clinic opens in Vienna for patients with dementia to relive their memories in a time period important to them, it seems a brilliant idea from the enigmatic but elusive creator. What follows is the narrator, his acquaintance, who joins his clinic, following the destruction of the premise as nations vote to return to the era of a country's apparent greatest moments. Fascinating premise +read.

^^p 246 Carving up landmasses not by geography, but by era.

48 “Happened stories are all alike, every unhappened story is unhappened in its own way.”

49 “There is no Time Machine except the human being.”

100 “The point of the experiment was to create a protected past or ‘protected time.‘ A time shelter. We wanted to open up a window into time and let the sick live there, along with their loved ones.”

The enigmatic Gaustine opens a clinic replicating the past to soothe Alzheimer‘s patients. As the pull to nostalgia spreads, healthy people seek out these “time shelters,” eventually leading to an EU referendum with each country choosing a decade. Nationalism, reenactments, memory, childhood. Trans. 2022.

254 “The world had become a chaotic open-air clinic of the past.”

266 “Have we spent it yet, my dear friends, the paycheck of the future?”

This fascinating novel follows the narrator's encounters with Gaustine, a man out of time who seems to have experienced the past firsthand. Together they establish time capsule therapies for patients with dementia, only to see the countries of Europe become collectively seduced by the past. A non-linear narrative where nothing is certain, not Gaustine's reality, the narrator's memory, or the nature of the past--not even time itself.

Discovered this at B&N today… anyone read it? Sounds intriguing ☺️

Also, settling in for my #hyggehourreadathon in the bath 🛁 with The Book of Doors 🚪✨🌉

Thanksgiving holiday TBR, part 1! Happy Turkey day, you all🌟

This book was on my radar because I saw the author on Rainn Wilson and the Geography of Bliss, where Rainn travels the world to find happiness -- including to Bulgaria, allegedly the unhappiest country, where Georgi Gospodinov lives and set this novel. I remembered that this book won the Booker and I googled it. I was drawn in by the premise and thoroughly enjoyed the entire thing.

It's really hard for me to write a review about this book. It works on so many different levels and address a lot of very important topics, that I can hardly express my feelings towards this work. It made me think, it involved me, it opened my eyes, it fascinated me. No, it wasn't what I expected it to be, but who could expect what is found in this book? It must've been so hard and difficult to write this, I imagine. I'm amazed.

"?? ?? ??? ??? ?? ??????? ????'? ??????, ?? ?? ???? ????? ?? ????"

This was like nothing I've read before.

It's like essays, short stories, anecdotes, satire, diary & notebook entries all in one.

It's a very interesting read, filled with ideas, mesmerising information, and quotes.

It's the most thought-provoking book I've read in a while.

If we are not in someone else‘s memory, do we even exist at all?

Forget those who were stomped under heavy boots, sent to camps. Forget those who were surveilled, lied to, separated, banned, humiliated... all must be for- gotten. And then forget the very forgetting... Forgetting takes a lot of work. You have to constantly remember that you are supposed to forget something. Surely that's how every ideology functions.

Yes the past is contagious. The contagion had crept in everywhere. But that wasn't the most frightening part - there were some quickly mutating strains that demolished all immunity. Europe, which had thought that after several serious lapses in reason in the twentieth century it had developed full resistance to certain obsessions, particular types of national madness, and so on, was actually among the first to capitulate...

What I wouldn't give to find out how Odysseus's story continued.....

I imagine him getting up out of his marriage bed, which he himself had crafted, in the middle of the night, sneaking out so as not to wake Penelope, sitting on the doorstep outside, and remembering everything. That whole twenty-year voyage had become the past, and the moon of that past attracted him ever more strongly, like at high tide.

This sudden groundswell of people who have lost their memories today is no coincidence... They are here to tell us something. And believe me, one day, very soon, the majority of people will start returning to the past of their own accord, they'll start "losing" their memories willingly. The time is coming when more and more people will want to hide in the cave of the past, to turn back. And not for happy reasons, by the way.

Ooh, the pages feel nice... maybe they upped the quality after this won the International Booker! 😁

Note to everyone: if I ever start to lose my memory, please DO NOT place me on the 90s floor. The 90s were rubbish and this would be my idea of a living hell.

I would go AWOL and they'd find me hiding out on the Art Deco floor pretending I'm in an episode of Poirot.

Well🤷🏻‍♀️ of course the winner of the #internationalbookerprize is one of my least favorites again but I have to admit the premise of this one is fantastic. A man creates spaces completely similar to how they were in a certain year for people with dementia. I loved being in those rooms and recognized much but the book got a bit out of control in my opinion.

#BookReport 19/23

Boulder made my week. What a book. So much said in so few pages. The Hiding Place was slow pick, Time Shelter and The Mandibles were both a bit disappointing for me.

This book has the best of premises. A man creates spaces for people with Alzheimer‘s that resemble a certain year in the past. They can hide here and feel at ease again. However more and more people want to return to the past, even without Alzheimer‘s.

There are many fragmented stories in the book, too many in my opinion, and I felt lost at times. So I loved the first half but have been skimming the second one. #internationalbooker

An inventive and deeply unsettling book. It delves into the impact of time on us as individuals and our desire to slow it down, as well as ways we have nostalgia for the past. In the second half it takes a dark turn that feels very close to home these days, looking at how dangerous a collective desire for the past can be. A very interesting read. #booker2023

Well, if the quiz results say so, then I guess I should?

#InternationalBooker

Marvellous! Quirky! But asks so many important questions about memory and identity. The exploration of modern history is also very interesting and intriguing! Brilliant time spent in a captivating world!

a novel that I found incredibly interesting at an ideas level. Gospodinov is explores time, history, and our relationship with the past in such an original way and this novel has all sorts of insightful things to say about these themes. Unfortunately it is also a novel that kept me at arms length. Structurally the sections didn‘t hang together as a cohesive narrative. This meant that the central characters never became three-dimensional for me.

🤯

An interesting and at times surreal exploration of the past, how we remember it and how it affects the present. The beginning of the book - set in a clinic where Alzheimer's patients live on floors that reproduce prior decades, of which they still have vivid memories - was excellent, but as the story shifts from the personal to the national level, with entire countries voting on which past era they would like to live in, it grew more mixed.

And as the monsters come out from the past they settle in the man. Gaustin ( The yellow notebook)

Happiness is not only impossible, but also unbearable. What will you do with its volatile matter? This ghostly light, soapy bubble that will burst in front of your nose, leaving a bit of hot foam in your eyes. Happiness? Happiness is impermanent - like milk in the sun, like a fly in winter and a crocus in early spring. His back as fragile as a dragonfly... Happiness is not in the history books.

We are the apocalypse of the world.