Welcome to Litsy!

It's telling that one of the oldest books in the world contains so many of the themes that continue being repeated in fiction right through today. Stories, after all, were overheard by man from the gods and quickly spread like a virus, marking the beginning of the age we still live in. Stories invade us, weave themselves into the fabric of our beings, until its hard to know where "we" end and the stories begin. Sophie says, "Whoa!"

The blurb says that these are traditional stories of yokai, spectral apparitions of varied kinds, which Wada retells in "spine-chilling" & "terrifying" fashion ?
Some I'm partially familiar with (the Snow Woman, the kappa, & the tengu ?) but I'm hoping to encounter lots of ghosts that are new to me ?
The book is copiously illustrated by the author's daughter, Haruna Wada, who really deserves a cover credit.
I think I'm going to enjoy this one!

(2023) I picked up this collection of stories shortly after finishing “Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke“ with a weird mixture of “WTF did I just read“ and “I'd like some more please.“ And this delivers: body horror, with an aesthetic more of dread than splatter, about love and cruelty and the things we know we shouldn't do and we do them anyway

#WeeklyFavorites

Fortune Smiles (and Tell No One) were both 4 stars for me this week. Yet The Correspondent is this month‘s favorite!

It‘s no Kitchen but I don‘t regret reading it. I didn‘t connect with the short stories as I hoped I would but that could be because Kitchen left me with unreasonable expectations.

I love that she dedicated the American version to Kurt Cobain.

You were right Meg, such a great short story collection! Challenging too, subjects like child porn, a former Stazi prison, a world dominated by drones etc. Challenging for sure but I loved it!

📸 Kythnos, Greece

Was #yuleswap a one off? It was a fun one. Did I miss seeing it for last winter?

Recent acquisition for our personal library.

Every once in a while, you find something good at the dollar store.

I read a lot of Babitz and some Didion in my early twenties because of their many perceptions about California.