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!

(1/2) Oops. Just completely forgot to post about the last two books I read lol. Been completely swept up in the new school year!

My last read of the summer. I figured it was short enough to squeeze in before school started & would be nice to knock out before I started the September seminar on CLR James that I‘m taking with the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research! 🙂

Set in the early 1900's in Kenya & Tanzania, we witness the invasion of the Germans and later the British.

There were parts of this I was totally absorbed in, while some chapters I struggled through. Some characters were really well done and interesting, while others flat and didn't really have a role anywhere.

Now reaching the end, I really like this story (which has been a theme for me with this author's work).

#CoverLove Day 11: there is #Gold in this cover of the first book in the Buru quartet that I managed to hunt down while I was in Bandung, Indonesia last week.

#CoverLove Day 9: Holding up Wretched Of The Earth (which I was searching for) while wearing my sturdy #Boots while at Daunt Bookstore in London last year.

I have seen Fanon referenced in several recent books I‘ve read, so I was happy to see this pop up at my library. He covers a lot of ground here, but the focus is on how white supremacy and colonialism shapes internalized racism. I absolutely see his influence on discussions of race we are having now, and this published in 1952.

Switched to audio for this one; it's a little dense for audiobook format, but I wanted to finish reading it and just didn't have capacity for sitting and reading the print book right now. Thankful for the accessibility that audiobooks provide!

#audiopuzzling

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.

I've just finished this novel and realised that I never knew our protagonists name, flicking back through the pages I don't think we are ever told.

We do know he is in his forties, he teaches in the UK and has a failing heart. We also know his family in Zanzibar have no idea he lives with an English woman and has a 17 year old daughter.

This feels very much like a character study, how silence can wrap itself around unsaid words and snowball.