Welcome to Litsy!

@TheKidUpstairs tagged me in a post about favorite books from our #AuldLangSpine matches from previous years. It was fun to reflect on books I wouldn‘t have otherwise read without @monalyisha and her matchmaking skills.
2022 @Mitch “The Book of Memory” - Petina Gappah
2023 @TheKidUpstairs “The Colony” - Audrey Magee
2024 @IndoorDame “Foster” - Claire Keegan
2025 @Singout — SO looking forward to digging in to your list next month!

On its surface, this is a book about a self-centered English painter mining an Irish island for his own purposes. At deeper depths, it‘s an exploration of colonialism and relations between colonizing nations. I thought it was fascinating.

#StorySettings #Island

A quiet but challenging book. Two foreigners - a French linguist and an English painter - arrive on a very small Irish-speaking Irish island in the 1970s, each with their own agenda. The story of the island is interspersed with matter of fact paragraphs of incidents from the Troubles. Asks questions about the impact and demands of foreigners on a small community, and how those butt up against the community‘s own needs and desires.

An English artist comes to an Irish island in the midst of the Troubles. A Frenchman arrives to study the Irish language. You‘re drawn into their work and also the lives of the islanders on whom they are reliant, and whose lives they are wilfully upturning. Each chapter is interspersed with brief details of the violence on the mainland which slowly infiltrates the lives of the islanders. Lovely, sobering, witty and heartbreaking in equal measure👇

Set in the 1970s on an isolated island in Ireland an English artist, Mr Lloyd, and a French linguist, JP, spend a summer living within the small island community. Both are exploiting the islanders in different ways. Told mainly through dialogues, inner thoughts of the characters and brief news summaries of killings in Northern Ireland, the novel explores colonialism, language, art and the Troubles.

A very well written tale bringing forth themes of neocolonialism, indigenous cultures, and the loss/ negotiations of language and culture. The story is slow but beautifully, sensitively written. Characters are well fleshed out. Narration was great on Audible.

A strange collage to celebrate a wonderful gift! Thank you @BarbaraBB !! The lovely wrapping matched Molly‘s new Spring harness. 😁🌈 (She wasn‘t sold on it yet because I got a different size this time. No lady likes to hear she‘s gone up a size. 😉) I am super excited for both these books!! The Colony has sat in my Amazon cart for months waiting for a price drop. 💕💕💕

That was my Sunday sorted then. What a fabulous read. So many interlinking themes and the political interjection through out. Some amazing characters and some thoroughly despicable ones.
A fantastic read ❤️

Quiet Sunday morning read.

4 Jan-10 Feb 22
#Bookerlonglist 8
A favourite from the longlist.
Two outsiders - a French linguist and English painter - bicker and joist on an isolated Irish fishing island which they both use for their own ends. Neither has any regard for its inhabitants. An indictment of the legacy of post-colonialism, it also raises questions of cultural appropriation, art and plagiarism.
I wanted a better outcome for James and Mairead but was never hopeful.

This is an absolute gem of a novel. I‘ve seen it described as “quiet” which it is, but also makes its point with a slam dunk! I think many readers will find something to love in this novel, it‘s political, a character study, and features exquisite nature writing. The way Magee inserted the facts of the attacks committed by and on the IRA was jarring, intentionally so, I imagine. A phenomenal read. And spoiler, I suppose but I despise Lloyd.

LOVING The Colony from your list @TheKidUpstairs
So so thankful this was on your #auldlangspine list and the push to read it!
Dinner is always better with a side of book. 🥑

@TheKidUpstairs — FINALLY getting to my first #auldlangspine book from your list, and loving it already! I love the writing style, and I‘d love to spend the rest of the day reading it! But…life 😑

#12Booksof2022 - day 9

Two men visits a island outside Ireland for different reasons. Their visit causes conflicts among them and the islanders.

#12Booksof2022 On the eighth day of Christmas my reading gave to me...a month with THREE best of the year reads!

I picked the tagged as tops, because I think it's stuck with me the most, but August was probably the best reading month of the year for me. Three awesome titles from this month:
The Colony by Audrey Magee
The Trees by Percival Everett
Prayer for the Crown Shy by Becky Chambers

@Andrew65

#12BooksOf2022

My August five ⭐️ read. Happy new year!

#Top22of22 Part 2

Favorite fiction part II. Read a handful from the Booker shortlist and enjoyed them all, particularly The Colony.

Something about islands and stories. Earlier this year I loved An Island by Karen Jennings, and here I was again, smitten by isolation and the focus on quirky inexpressive characters against stark elements on an small isolated Island (here Irish). The inexpressive simplicity and implied complexity is compelling in itself somehow. And Magee kept me a state throughout. This is my 7th from the #Booker2022 longlist, and currently my favorite.

This years top 12 for me. All wonderful books❤️ Limberlost by Robbie Arnott took my top spot..but I loved the wonderful Irish writing of John Boyne, Audrey Magee and Claire Keegan. Also some wonderful Australian authors of crime and Steven Carroll‘s Eliot Quartet !
Hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and you get a book or two under the tree! 🎄🎅❤️
#top12books #favourites

#AdventRecommends December 17th

Two men visits an island in the ocean outside Ireland. I quite novel that packs a punch.

Rembrandt van Rijn Drawings : A SEATED FEMALE NUDE AS SUSANNA c. 1647

So, I‘m not quite halfway, but really enjoying this novel on a small isolated Irish island. ( #booker2022 )

Started this morning. ( #booker2022 )

Next up 🎧

If you‘ve read this book you‘ll love this video of rowboats off the Aran Islands moving cattle. https://www.instagram.com/tv/Ck-a4k7ghvk/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Gosh, intense in both writing and content.
Truly gripped from the start as she portrays the remote island community, the artist and the writer. James becomes a voice of different characters almost as we learn about the language and history.
Then the inserts about killings.
Very well written and researched. I won't forget this book.

Just started last night.
Interesting use of words and format.

#OminousOctober Day 23: The #Evil(s) of colonialism, I believe, are portrayed in both novels. Recent book haul. 💕

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This is an exploration of identity, including the political, personal, cultural, linguistic, and artistic, whether it be claimed, foisted, or lost.

What a novel and what fantastic narration!

Definitely speaks to the senseless nature of political violence. 😠

Beautifully written novel that seems reserved and quiet and yet it is full of themes that will leave you pondering everything you just read.

The way the paintings and the thoughts of the painter were described left such vivid images in my mind while I listened to this audiobook.

Truly great read and the slow pace just draws you into the story more.

#LittenListen @aperfectmjk #Scarathlon #TeamSlaughter @Clwojick

I am loving the narrator for this one! Single narrator, but he makes a subtle distinction between characters which isn‘t jarring or hokey. Fabulous.

Slow moving story so far, but wonderful in description and intriguing character development. There seems to be something under the surface Magee is building. 🤞🏾

^^p 158 self portrait: as beauty and beast

Magee does a beautiful job capturing the thought patterns of Lloyd the painter, seeing everything in captured compositions, chopping up experience into canvas-ready bits, labeling life as series. Reader feels the compulsion & training & beauty & limitations of his way of seeing. Skillful use of style to enhance character. His pride & self-pity. Difficult to describe visual arts in prose, she succeeds.

Small isle off Ireland, 1979. Smart construction: rivalries & nationalist tensions in microcosm (personal squabbles of English painter, French linguist & Irish hosts) juxtaposed w/ journalistic accounts of mainland violence (the Troubles). Art & appropriation. Colonial power. Loss. Tradition. Language. Telegraphic dialogue & flowing interior monologues. Anxiety builds to quiet final conflict. Gorgeous landscapes. Dashed promises & melancholy. 2022

This was a quiet and slightly brutal story. I can‘t say I really liked any of the characters, but they were all drawn in a way that was very saturated and appealingly lifelike.

Someone said that this is a quiet book and I love that description. Just add the sound of the sea. Beautifully written, I‘m so disappointed it didn‘t make the Booker short list, it deserved to be on it. I rushed home each night to have a chance to read this stunning novel.

I am not sure what I could possibly add to all that has already been said about this book… an English painter heads to an Irish island and is annoyed to learn he isn‘t the only visitor when a French linguist arrives. Art, identity, and colonialism and a book I wish had made the Booker shortlist but I am glad you all convinced me to try.

This is a quiet book that crawled under my skin without me realising it before well into the novel.

Two strangers arrive at the island; the Englishman (painter) and the Frenchman (linguist). The strangers do their things and the islanders do their best to make it as comfortable as possible for the strangers.

A book about colonialism, conquer and conquered, how it‘s easier to save someone/thing far away, who defines who you are

But, but…The Colony 😩 Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies 😩

#BookerPrize2022

Although, I haven't been able to read the entire longlist this time, I can't to miss #BookerPrize2022 prediction party. I finished 8 books, After Sappho and Nightcrawling have the current status ‘in the progress‘, Case Study and Booth are on the waiting list, while for Glory - I‘m not sure if I'm going to read it at all. So here's my shortlist …

During the first few pages in “The Colony” the boatman has told Mr Lloyd so many times that “you‘ll be grand” that I‘ve lost count.

This phrase reminds me of the movie “The Leap Year” where Declan (Matthew Goode) basically tells Anna (Amy Adams) the same throughout the movie. The movie is also set in Ireland.

Is this a common Irish phrase or is it just a coincidence?

Some of the books I read in August, tagged book my favourite. Or possibly After Sappho. And Squire was lovely too. I could go on.

#bookmail
Qa.80 each - used apparently! The Colony doesn‘t even look read. Saving for my reading weekend.

#BookReport 34/22

The fish was okay for me but the other two I adored. I am really digging the #Bookerprize2022 longlist. The tagged one is my favorite so far - I think.

Safe travels Cindy!

#Booker22 #Longlist
This was such a compelling read for me.

Set in the late 1970s, an English artist moves to an isolated Irish island to paint for the summer: but it's not quite as isolated as he hoped. The Island is not cut off from the news of death after death as the Troubles roll on.

She sighed, pulled on her scarf, and talked to the men and their sons at the tills who pressed even more books into my hands, pamphlets too, some in French, most in Arabic, read these, son, they will explain everything to you, and I read them, as best I could, children's books on the history of Algeria, on the relationship with France...