Welcome to Litsy!

4⭐️ I quite liked this book. Very introspective and informative. There were a number of things I liked about the book; would like to purchase a paperback copy when it comes out. And he mentions what he intended to say in regards to the Nikki Haley comment that lead to his firing #2024 #memoir #religion #nonfiction #politics

The title here is Pilgrims by M.R. Leonard, his literary debut. I‘d call it speculative scifi & when i describe it it sounds ludicrous.

Earth is under oppressive martial law awaiting a coming alien invasion. 🛸👽

The aliens land. The aliens are devout Catholics.🧐

Sounds like satire. It is not.

Our main character is a Latin teacher that discovers studying Classics in college was a crackerjack major after all. 🤯

Pynchon is such a recognizable figure that it can be hard to remember that I'd never actually read anything that he'd written (until now). Rating a Pynchon novel feels like a loaded exercise, like I'm wading into a generations-old war between one side that believes he's the greatest writer ever to put pen to paper and another side that believes that everyone from the first group is a pretentious know-nothing masquerading as an intellectual. 👇

One summer afternoon Mrs Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary.

If power were never anything but repressive, if it never did anything but to say no, do you really think one would be brought to obey it? What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn‘t only weigh on us as a force that says no; it also traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourses.

Picked this up at a used book shop on a whim & glad I did. It opens as Mrs Dean (an assumed name?) checks into a hotel. She has a suitcase full of cash & no memory of who she is or how she got there. She spends her days wandering the town, having awkward conversations & avoiding any attempt at deciphering her identity even though people show up claiming to be friends and family. Part of the fun was having no idea what was happening or how it 👇

#Two4Tuesday @TheSpineView

1. Much as I predicted a month ago, my favorite book of August was also my favorite for July - White Noise.

2. The casual mix of absurdism, wit, and existential dread.

Tag @RaeLovesToRead @BarbaraBB @Eggs @wanderinglynn @MegaWhoppingCosmicBookwyrm @ImperfectCJ @Leftcoastzen @Librarybelle @andrew61 @Vansa @CBee @dabbe

Death is everywhere - hovering in the air (the "airborne toxic event"), on the TV and radio (natural disasters, mass graves), even in the doctor's office ("concerning reports") - and our only answer is to buy more junk. I was hesitant to read WN because of its place in the PoMo pantheon and influence on writers I'm ambivalent towards (DFW, Eggers) or actively dislike (the Jonathans), but in the end I'm glad I did. Absurd, hilarious, and...?

#Two4Tuesday @TheSpineView

1. The one I'm reading now, which will probably be my favorite book for August as well - White Noise
2. It's one of those books I've known about and have been meaning to read seemingly forever, then came across in a used bookstore when I had store credit to burn.

Tag @RaeLovesToRead @CBee @Leftcoastzen @eeclayton @MegaWhoppingCosmicBookwyrm @BarbaraBB @andrew61 @dabbe

War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country.