Welcome to Litsy!

August ended up being a slower reading month than anticipated, but I‘m pleased to have crossed of three #TOB2025 books. Waiting on The Wedding People and Martyr from the Library.

Short version: “Ambivalent“ is the right word to describe how I feel about this book. There were parts of this book I LOVED and parts I really did not love.
Suzie? I kept forgetting she existed and then she'd pop up like a game of whack-a-mole. The mushroom “scene“ was off the rails--these types of things made the plot feel like a game of yo-yo. Jinx was a GREAT character. Full review in comments. #TOB2025

It isn't just simply “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as told by Jim.“ The messages aren't subtle, but it is an invitation to think about an old character (or actually old characters--Huck, too), in a new way. There are parts that drag a bit, but overall the novel illuminates the privilege of “adventures“ and how characters can reclaim and change the archetypes to which they've been relegated. #TOB2025

Well, I tried. I had a really hard time relating to the relentless onslaught of the narrative. I felt like I was a therapist, and I was simply reading a transcript of sessions of a woman in an unhappy marriage. As a child of divorced parents, it did make me think a bit, but mostly the book just tired me out. I needed more shape and direction. #TOB2025

“I began to understand what a story is. It‘s a manipulation. It‘s a way of containing unmanageable chaos.” Finally something resonates in this book. #TOB2025

I‘m in a test of wills with this book. Just renewed it for a week because I‘m determined to finish it, but I‘m 70% there and EXHAUSTED. Sorry—unpopular opinion, I know. 😢#TOB2025

Tonight I went to a wonderful “Reading Dinner” where we sit around and read (I brought James) for awhile and then have dinner. Such a pleasure to discuss #TOB2025 books with smart people.

It is a good book--and with some of the detritus cleared and perhaps a bit more interest in the trajectory of narrative, it could have been great. Certainly it was enough that I'll be curious to read what comes next from Cunningham, and I hope there is a “next“! #TOB2025

I am glad I read it, and there were definitely parts of the book I thought were glorious in prose and imagination. But at the end I felt I had finished putting together a piece of furniture, and found myself looking at several screws and bolt or two that were “left over.“ #TOB2025

Al-Essa's “looking glass“ is perhaps more than it seems, and we are easily manipulated into caring for characters even though they bear titles, like stock figures, rather than names. The “Everyman“ approach keeps a strange distance, until we come to understand the power of our own imaginations with an ending that has been described as a “narrative rupture“ or a “twist worthy of Kafka.“ #TOB2025