Welcome to Litsy!

“Each of us is afraid. It‘s there in the way we hold our cups. It‘s in the way we look about us, squinting into the misty nooks of the bar to see what‘s hidden…….Tonight we‘re not drinking to forget, but to remember and dream. It‘s hope that makes us afraid and I remind myself that a man should be grateful for his fears, because it means he has something to lose and to win.”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book had the most bonkers moments. Not used to seeing "gobshite" or "how things goin'" when reading a book of ancient Athens. I'm telling you, it works. It turned out to be an emotional read. How one person survived a war and imprisonment by knowing Euripedes work.

A bit far fetched but thoroughly entertaining!

So good. Took me way too long to get into but that was all me and too many freakin‘ mundane things to attend to (like cleaning and j-o-b). Gotta love a book that upon finishing the very last sentence, tears threaten and so I must laugh instead. Pick! Stack it!

#June2025 Book55 📸 Stormy sky in Kansas

Grand so.

“It‘s hope that makes us afraid, and I remind myself that a man should be grateful for his fears, ‘cause it means he has something to lose and to win.”

“Directors without a producer are like a ship without a sail, the medium of wind to endeavors nautical being equivalent to coin in all theatrical,…”

Some really great sentences in this! 🌟 #debut #drama #ToF

Next up! #ToF

What a wonderful book. It does this book a disservice to call it a comedy or a tragedy or any one thing. It is a layered story with interesting and lovable characters. It has a perspective and, yes, it made me laugh. I cannot recommend this book enough.

Using litsy after a while!Also writing reviews after a while, bear with me while I do a reviews dump of books I've loved!Cannot recommend this delightful historical fiction enough.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6758491576

I LOVED this book. And yet, I immediately feel the need to very sparingly recommend it, because it's one of those ones that I would not have thought I would love, if I knew what it was before I read it. Sure, the ancient Greek part, the discussion of Euripides' plays is a draw. I can get on board with bringing a smaller scale, down-to-earth focus on a few characters to historical or 'from the distant past' events, 1/?

#12Booksof2024 i had a number of surprise 5-star reads to round out 2024, but i think this tragedy (about ancient Greek tragedies!) and set in ancient Syracuse won my heart.
A great year! Thanks for hosting @Andrew65

This one is me, not the book. I tend not to enjoy fiction set in Ancient Greece and this was no different. Glad I gave it a try at least. Don‘t let me deter anyone. #TOBlonglist

I loved this, it was brilliant, but then maybe it is something only another Classicist would love? I have beef with the blurb calling it a comedy, it is def a tragedy, if a madcap one, and it is about POWs being forced to perform in order to eat, so rather brutal for even dark comedy. But there were still some flashes of beauty, and I appreciate the decisions the author made in plot and execution. #tob25 #tob25longlist

I didn't mean to sound like I hadn't found new things to read in the #tob2025 longlist! Above the line are books that have been on and off my monthly tbr stacks all year and which I'll now try harder to fit in, and below the line are books newly on my radar 🥰 I can't believe I missed the newest Rivers Solomon!

Love this. Bumblers into heroes arc, beautiful prose, beautifully paced. Set in Sicily during the Peloponnesian War, but laced with Irish jargon and a stripped-down setting of quarries & markets for a sense of timelessness near the “wine-dark” sea. Brutality & art. Preservation of culture. Entertaining the enemy. Funny & sentimental. Crazy premise (stage Medea with actors now prisoners of war) becomes a beautiful meditation on art & freedom. 2024

#bookhaul 😁

It's won awards & everyone is raving about it - so it was fairly obvious I wouldn't rate it! (Seriously, why IS it always me?!) The Irish voice is irritating, a gratuitous gimmick for the sake of novelty, a cheap "unique selling point". Lampo is initially such an unpleasant character it's hard to warm to him during his redemption. I found the writing stodgy & the pace draggy. It wasn't as witty as it thought it was. It gets better at the end.

This was a good balance of funny and horrific, the narrator Lampo both a tragic hero and a bumbling fool. The tone was perhaps a bit too modern, Lampo sounded like an Irishman, but in a way it added to the sense of theatre. (Who knows what a potter in ancient Syracuse sounded like anyway?) And fortunately it is not (post-post-post?) modern in its ending. On the contrary, the final sentence makes you nod in agreement, fully satisfied with the story

Common sense is common, has no imagination, and it only works by precedent. It leaves the man who follows it poorer, if not in pocket, then in his heart. Fuck common sense.

Getting stuck into this one. First few pages didn't hook me immediately, but I'm warming to it

This reads like Greek tragedy. It's very clever actually. And I love the goofy cover.

#BookSpinBingo @TheAromaofBooks

Pub date was 3/26/24
#ARC #Netgalley