Welcome to Litsy!

Very very sweet stories all variations on some themes: 1) a very poor family cannot afford anything for Christmas and something happens that means the family can have traditional Christmas food and the kids gifts, and 2) there‘s been some rift in the family (normally over inheritance of land) and something happens to heal the rift. I would have preferred some diversity in themes. Short and good for a low-anxiety read. ⬇️

I loved reading about all the little secrets as the Joseph children prepared gifts for each other! (Also, why are children so often described as having “curly heads”?!) In the end, this is yet another sweet story of kindness and sharing at Christmas. 💜🎄

#KindredSpiritsChristmas #KindredSpiritsBuddyRead

Another heartwarming read today for #KindredSpiritsChristmas - The large, poor but happy Josephs family gets a nice Christmas surprise from some wealthy visitors on Christmas Eve night. 4⭐️ 80 points

#HolidayBookDragons
#WinterGames2024
#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 What a trip… Separate short stories of rejection (feminist dudebro no women want to sleep with, woman romantically obsessed with a friend, etc.) that veer into the very explicit, and then into someone creating an online bot universe? Finishes with a “rejection letter” to the author about the book‘s flaws. I liked some, some went maybe farther than necessary, and the end got too navel-gazey for me. Soft/equivocal pick. #ToB25

I read a lot of Anthony Trollope novels a few decades ago but had not heard of this surprisingly short (especially for AT) holiday tale! Honestly, it struck me as what the 1893 version of a comfortably predictable but charmingly written sit-com episode would be!
Delightful!

Of late, I have been drawn to more “literary” or “challenging” books and this one certainly challenged me! These stories are spare and minimalist and require work of the reader. All of them deal with the lives and experiences of women and the way they interact with the world, in ways both big and small. While some of the stories were opaque in their meaning, I think this is a book that would be served well by being re-read.

Another one from the Ghost Story Collection. I quite enjoyed this particular story, centred on the belief that the dead can be disturbed in their sleep through a modern railway. A fun, quick read!

What is the happiest Christmas morning you can remember?

This was another lovely story about giving to others on Christmas. So many of these stories have the same exact themes—in today‘s story, noticing someone who is lonely or less-fortunate and bringing them Christmas joy—but I LIKE those themes!

#KindredSpiritsBuddyRead #KindredSpiritsChristmas

I feel like I‘m going to have to read these stories again to fully “get” them—that being said, this is a great collection of stories, the longest of which is almost a novella, that are all odd & varying degrees of unsettling. They are all very well constructed and the writing is excellent. So too is the translation which is phenomenal. I imagine this is a book that evokes strong love/hate it reactions. I found it really interesting.

A collection of short ghost stories all written by the author. Like many collections, it's a mixed bag - some of the stories are really quite effective with the ambience & creeping sense of menace, whereas others either wander off into too much extraneous detail or frustratingly fizzle out just as they're getting good. Given James's background, it shouldn't come as a surprise that so many of the stories are based around religion & the Church.