Welcome to Litsy!

I‘m finally doing it. I started watching the series and just knew I would probably love reading it more. So here we are….Better late than never.

I finished listening to this over the weekend, and I‘m still not sure what I think about it. I frequently found the way the narrator described things and how he inserted himself in the story entertaining. However, the way things came together at the end seemed abrupt to me, and my overall impression was more a so-so than a pick.

I put this on hold for #AuthorAMonth, but just now got to it.

#1001books #audiobook

(1741) In 1740 Samuel Richardson wrote Pamela, an epistolary novel about a servant girl who resists her employer's increasingly forceful sexual advances until he proposes marriage, at which point they happily wed. In this 1741 novella, Henry Fielding lampooned Pamela by pretending to publish Pamela's original letters, which expose her as a fraud. Fielding's wit is sharper than Richardson's, but his classism and misogyny are, if anything, worse.

I've gotten back into the #1001books list a little more consistently, I've read I think 4 in the last few months. I'm using Serial Reader to tackle some - currently it's Erewhon, and honestly I'd be finding it a slog if it weren't for the bite sized installments.

Anyone else reading the #1001books list have recommendations for real gems you've found on the list? The last several I've read have all been fine, but I'm hoping for more than fine.

I could not resist posting this. Laugh out loud funny of course. Warning: #ranttime

https://youtu.be/_GXNJ3V9lzg

This satire is a blazing takedown of cancel culture and our collective obsession with social media and being chronically online. I love John Boyne‘s books but have read about his own recent situation which he was “cancelled”. Knowing his personal views and in light of recent events, I read this through a lens of “this is how the author feels” when outrageous and over the top “woke” characters were skewered. An absurd #dysfunctionalfamily.⬇️

It has been ages since I've picked up a Vonnegut novel and I did not particularly enjoy this one, which deeply saddens me. Mayhap the passage of time for me personally or the passage of time culturally, or maybe just the bitterness of the modern era stole the zest from this satire. So it goes.

An epistolary novel that imagines former Sen. Strom Thurmond‘s wish (and that of his PR aide) to chronicle his part in shaping African American history in the U.S. (It‘s not a spoiler alert to say they believe he was a positive influence.) This book is totally bonkers but also makes pointed statements about the hypocrisy of Northern states condemning Southerners for racism while ignoring their own lack of commitment to civil rights.

Fishing for sharks, cutting off their fins for soup, and then throwing the rest back into the sea is a hideous practice, but the sharks may be getting the last laugh. Researchers at the University of Miami found out in 2012 that shark fins contain a neurotoxin that scientists have linked to Lou Gehrig's disease and other degenerative conditions, such as Alzheimer's.