Welcome to Litsy!

#OffMyShelf “translated”

Mon dieu! Zola does not pull his punches. Interesting to read this so close to the Rules of Attraction. The Kill is also a novel about amoral people behaving badly.

Set during the rampant speculation and corruption of the 2nd Empire, Saccard comes up from the provinces to collect his spoils by using any form of fraud or deceit. Everyone is a tool to be exploited him, including his wife and son.

#WhereAreYouMonday

I‘m in 19th century 2nd Empire Paris where Haussmann and Napoleon III are transforming the city into the wide boulevards and tall buildings so characteristic of Paris today. This building frenzy invites speculation and corruption. Fortunes are made and lost. Waste and decadence are encouraged and celebrated.

Each book in this series is better than the last,I can't wait to finish all.Read No.3 in Rougon-Macquart,so nuanced and intelligent,and so continually relevant.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7578825197

#TLT #ThreeListThursday

Thank you for the tag @dabbe 😊 I‘ve picked for my three, some Zola titles I‘ve not yet read. I will nominate all three for next year‘s #HashtagBrigade selections. 🤞 I know that Zola super fan @sisilia will support this! 😂

Now @Leoslittlebooklife & I are 1/2 through the 20 vol Rougon-Macquart series. This was a marked departure in tone from the previous books. A previous title does it more justice- Restless House. Like in The Assommoir, an apartment building features heavily in the story but this time it‘s a petit bourgeois building vs the squalor of a tenement. While madcapped, lusty and frenetic, the last 4th of the book hammers home the hypocrisy beautifully.

Current stack

I finished Part 1 of My Struggle Book 1 and needed a break. KOK is as intense as the way he looks! 😏 So I‘m back to 19th century France with Zola. I don‘t think this is a stroll-in-the-park kind of read, either 😅

5😱 This novel reads like a full speed train! Domestic violence, rape, murder, lust, suicide… it has everything! This is Zola with high level of madness; I could feel the horror when he describes the aftermath of a derailment and the Anna Karenina-style of self-destruction. Definitely a book to savour but preferably not during Christmas season 😅