Welcome to Litsy!

"He enjoyed the sunshine on his face and the patterns of the white dust at his feet. The persistence of the aeroplane's noise, however, reminded him of an uneasiness in himself. Uneasiness seemed to be the background of all ruminations belonging to the twentieth century, just as all its landscapes were presided over, somewhere in the distance, by an aeroplane." ☀️✈️?️

"Once we acknowledge sentiment in other animals, we are bound to acknowledge what follows: their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
- Brigid Brophy

[Quotation not necessarily from the tagged book ?]

A 1953 satire about animal rights. The blurb says that Brophy's 1965 manifesto, "The Rights of Animals," kick-started the modern animal rights movement, so she has good credentials. Her other biographical details say she also campaigned for prison reform, gay rights, pacifism, humanism and vegetarianism, so I'm expecting to find "Hackenfeller's Ape" hitting my marks ??

#BigMoon three moon titles
I saw PaperMoon at the drive in as a child and loved Tatum. Apparently its based on an obscure novel?
#falling
@eggs
@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

I‘m currently reading my 7th Elizabeth Jane Howard with @shawnmooney and this one is a volume of her short stories. We‘ve been working through her books in publication order (and may even get to the start of The Cazalet Chronicles next year 😆).

I found this surprisingly riveting at times, though some parts are slow. It charts both the census itself and the things it recorded, touching on things like industrialisation, the Highland Clearances, the Potato Famine, emigration, immigration, WWI, WWII... all kinds of things which affected the population of the UK. Also there's a bit on the wider “British Empire“.

Today's reading is getting me off to a good start with #BookSpinBingo!

Didn't share my May stats!

Found this in a 2nd hand bookshop & couldn‘t resist after Family Roundabout. Tilly enters service as a 15 year old in the late C19th and watches as the family she serves grows up and grows old. Unhappy marriages feature again & there is a degree of contempt for the social norms of the monied classes. Tilly has more sense & more empathy than all of her so called betters. I‘ll be looking out for more Richmal Crompton.

I'm having to do a first post on some of the books I've started reading concurrently in order for them to show up properly as I can mark them as current reads! The list is just growing and growing and growing... I'm very whim-driven at the moment, just reading a little of multiple books at the same time, and that's fine.

I'm finding this one more interesting than I thought, even while it's still just describing how the census was set up!

And now it‘s a classic 🤣