Welcome to Litsy!

Hollinghurst, the gay author, is a beautiful, elegant, paced writer. And this audiobook is read perfectly. But, whoa, slow. David Winn has many layers of separation between his single mother home, half-Burmese appearance, gay sexuality, and those of wealthy, elite-school classmates. The book keeps going through his 1970‘s acting career, many relationships, and on to covid. A little too much too slowly for this listener. But I liked the style.

I‘ve been picking away at this since Dec 27. I‘m sort of mostly done, but just wanted to share what I‘m actively listening to.

This is my first Hollinghurst, so I‘m just learning what an elegant prose writer he is. Everything is beautiful. It‘s also really long, patient and slow. The life a gay actor on an Oxford scholarship.

This book started strong but completely fizzled out 40% in. I bailed at 60%—life‘s too short for boring books, and I‘ve hit my limit on privileged, elite British society.

All the feelings of a big classic novel. This is old-fashioned storytelling, complete with lush prose, layers of characterisation, and a context that lives as much as the characters do. A really immersive story about struggles of class, race, sexuality, and family in post-war Britain. I wish I‘d been able to submerge myself in this more completely, a drawn out reading let me miss a bit of nuance I‘m sure. An excellent read.

I had never heard of the involvement of Burma in WWII. This adventurous and atmospheric novel is packed with great characters and dire situations.

An insider's travelogue, originally written in English in the nineties (and published later). Ma Thanegi, an artist from Yangon, goes on a pilgrimage bus tour around Myanmar, and tells us about the people she meets, the food she eats and the places she sees. I learned a lot and it's also a good springboard for further research (because my knowledge of #Myanmar was abysmal). The photos in the French version were well chosen.

Julia travels from New York to the small birth village of her father in Burma to try to find out what happened to him as he disappeared four years back. A mysterious local who seems to know her closely tells her the heart-breaking story of her father's youth, before he moved to the US. Although the story is a bit too "fairytalish", I still enjoyed the writing and the atmosphere created by the immersion in the Burmese life, culture and traditions.