Welcome to Litsy!

This work was gorgeous and gave me A L L the feels. Some parts were more relatable than others, but the whole thing was just so... real? This was a refreshing read, altho heavy at times. #BookerPrize2019 #BlackAuthors #Feminism #LGBTQ #2021

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My final book to read from this years Booker longlist and there might have been a reason I held off for so long. I must have intuited Levy was not for me. In actual fact I liked the writing but I found the entire thing very “meh” as a whole as well as needlessly obtuse. It is quite an emotionally “cold” book but luckily it is short !

I think this has to be my most productive reading month - I couldn‘t even fit in the 10th book. Admittedly some of these are novella sized. Tough to call to decide “Book of the Month “ but I am going with Colson !
#Readharder2019 22/24 😊😊
#Bookerprize2019 12/13

Which means I am so close to being free of my 2019 reading ‘commitments‘

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I thought this one would make a fantastic addition to a Brit Lit course which also included A. Levy's Small Island and Z. Smith's White Teeth. Together they tell a rich story of Britain and its colonial past. The 12 voices of here cover many circles on the intersectional Venn diagram. Radical feminism sits alongside classism and the gender identity politics of a younger generation.
It is a vertiginous undertaking which mostly succeeds.

Well, well, well! Congratulations to the winners. And congratulations especially to Evaristo for being the first black woman to be awarded the prize. I'm surprised that they broke the rules set 30+ years ago to not have any more joint prizes....
I'm really looking forward to reading Evaristo's work but did Atwood really deserve it this time? I haven't read The Testaments but I'm skeptical... Something smells fishy.
#BookerPrize2019

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For the most part I really enjoyed this, I have always loved Atwood and she hardly ever lets me down. However, I would have to say the last third of this seemed a tiny bit rushed ? It‘s a shame because even though I was one who doubted the need for a Handmaids Tale sequel, in the end I was won over by how she approached this. I just wish the ending was as solid as the start.

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My first experience with Rushdie and I was quite taken by this one. It‘s a crazy, sprawling meta-fictional ride with a little sci-fi / absurdist bent. It does traverse a porous line between fiction and reality, there are Mastodons as a kind of social metaphor, alongside stinging indictments of aspects of modern day America, Britain and India. This novel has such breadth and yet remaIns funny, propulsive and grandly risky. Loved it !

“But I must render it all in as much detail as I can” - oh, how I wish you wouldn‘t. This was too long, with too many digressions which took me out of a story I had trouble enough following. Obioma‘s writing is beautiful, but it wasn‘t enough to save the experience for me. It is a shame, because I loved The Fishermen

#BookerPrize2019

This was a lot better than I expected! I have only read one Rushdie before, which I didn‘t love, so I had prepared myself for “meh”, but I ended closer to “yeah”.

It was weird and funny, with an abundance of current topics told through a story within a story - the opioid crisis, racism, politics, tv and film, and so much more.

It‘s a lot, I know. But unexpectedly well done. #BookerPrize2019