#luckystar #MOvember

Careful, don't look directly at it 😎

@Cinfhen

#trueblue #MOvember

Some shades of blue from my shelf 💙

@Cinfhen

#borderline #MOvember
I try not to repeat myself as much as possible, so for those of you who have already heard my tired Cormac McCarthy sermon, I apologize. But here it is again. The Road and Blood Meridian are fine novels, but books 2 and 3 of The Border Trilogy, The Crossing and Cities of the Plain, are his best (imho).
Do you all have favorites that get overshadowed by other works from the same author? I'd like to hear them!
@Cinfhen

#humannature #MOvember
My #currentread is not letting me forget that I missed yesterday's Madonna song prompt 😃
@Cinfhen

#frozen #MOvember
@Cinfhen

#LikeAPrayer #MOvember
A few from my shelf with religious themes and characters. My favorite is probably Satanic Verses, with Gilead and Meany as runners up. Siddhartha and Oranges are still TBR. Not sure if I liked the tagged book- some interesting historic/Biblical storylines, but also many gut-churning accounts of Roman emperors like Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero... pretty violent and horrific all around 🤢
@Cinfhen

#bookshopping #KeepLitsyActive
#2. Author is most: usually buy authors I've been wanting to try or those I already like.
#5. Price is next when used book shopping- it's fun to find good deals.
#3 Title and #4 length occasionally - a really good title makes me take notice, but less likely to buy doorstops.
#6 I never read professional reviews, but if I'm new to an author I'll look at Goodreads ratings.
#1 Cover yes, but unconsciously.

When a #beautifulstranger comes to Millburn, the place becomes a literal #ghosttown as a once dormant horror terrorizes the imaginations of its residents, with special ire directed towards a group of old friends who form a club of sorts to trade stories of the supernatural (some of which might be true).
Not Madonna pictured here, but I was listening to this old favorite and it seemed to fit. 😱😨
@Cinfhen

#laislabonita #MOvember
Two of the six narratives in Cloud Atlas take place on pretty islands. I'm a fan of The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing, even though it seems like the least discussed storyline. Even though it's the quietest, Mitchell nails the classic British novel style, and the island has a mysterious quality that is fun to explore.
@Cinfhen

#expressyourself #MOvember
Apparently John Self expresses himself by making a movie about money, while "living money, talking money, and spending money on all the excesses 20th-century culture has to offer: drink, dope, sex, fast food, and love."
On my TBR shelf but from that description...sounds like a terrible novel! On the other hand, Amis hasn't let me down yet, and this is probably his most famous, so I can't not read it ?‍♂️
@Cinfhen

#iconic #MOvember
I think Atwood is one of our most iconic living authors. One of my early favorite authors when I started getting into reading as an adult.
@Cinfhen

I don't plan my next reads too rigidly: I usually have a few candidates that have been on my shelf for awhile, and when I finish a book I bring them out and see which I #crave in the moment. Usually I have a one word prejudice in my head - e.g. devastating, innovative, difficult, intellectual, etc. But it's not until I read the first sentence or two that I really know what I want. One of these four will probably be next 🤔
#MOvember @Cinfhen

#sorry #MOvember

Self-explanatory I think...☺

@Cinfhen

Review in the style of Thomas Ligotti 👇

#girlgonewild #MOvember
This story collection is on my TBR, partly because of the good things I've heard, and partly because this is one of my favorite covers in the last few years.
@Cinfhen

#RescueMe #MOvember
It's that time of year where I'm going over my favorite reads of 2019, and I know Swamplandia! will be high on my list. I was rooting for one character's rescue so intensely that I was almost surprised when I set the book down and found that I wasn't wandering in the Everglades with her. Narratives about being lost in the woods generally freak me out more than other situations - it's so easy to picture it happening.
@Cinfhen

#Music #MOvember
Some music books or music-themed fiction. Didn't have as many as I would have guessed...odd.
@Cinfhen

This is one book I #cherish both because it's a favorite and remembering how I picked it up. I was browsing in a Borders (gives you an idea how long ago this was) and started flipping through it. Never read any Nabokov, never read anything that played games with form (wasn't a huge reader at the time in general). I started thinking 'what IS this?' I took it to the reading area, read it until the place closed, and took it home.
#MOvember @Cinfhen

Three cheers for dancers disembowled!
There's room to writhe on the killing floor.
Is it a battle... or is it a dance? Who cares:
Mad Beelzebub fiddles, evermore.

Happy Halloween everyone!!💀☠💀☠

Parts of this kept reminding me of other books or films (some of which came after the book, so not Tryon's fault) that I didn't feel completely immersed in what would have creeped me out even more than it did. Even if you can get many of the events elsewhere (with a few memorable exceptions), Tryon is an expert at creating a thick, eerie atmosphere when he describes scenes, and has a gift for depicting mad, spiraling thoughts in his characters 👇

Beware if you enter Oyeyemi's world. Not all who choose to stay at this eerie bed and breakfast with the Silver's will be scared. If you've read this author before, you'll already know this isn't really a horror novel all the time- she's got about 5 pots of thematic stews boiling at any point. But if you're like me and ideas and images are what scare you, then come in, make yourself comfortable. Don't worry about the whispers. And have an apple 🍎

Thanks to @Emilymdxn for recommending this one. Wallace-Wells makes a perfect case for why it's not enough to believe in climate change, vote appropriately, and make individual green choices. He writes eloquently about why we need unprecedented global action to reduce carbon emissions, even if it won't prevent much of what is in store in a 'best case' scenario. Not easy to hear what's coming, but crucial that we all develop a sense of urgency.

#NameChallenge
Thanks for the tag @Aimeesue !
@Leftcoastzen if you want to play, spell your name with the titles of books 🙄

This might be the most popular book on Litsy that I hadn't read until now, which seems ironic at first glance considering this is a work about social outcasts. But maybe it's not so incongruous: as readers in an increasingly non-reading world, it's tempting to want to retreat into our worlds of imagination. We are all of us Constance, wanting to make the effort to connect to others, even as our inner Merricat tempts us to withdraw. Loved it 🖤

This strange gem begins in a Buenos Aires asylum in 1907 where a bunch of the doctors are creeping on the head nurse as a series of horrific experiments are undertaken to probe the boundaries of life and death. Not weird enough? Then we flash forward a hundred years to glimpse the life of an artist obsessed with integrating the human body and its various parts into shocking exhibitions. Dark and funny, with a sharp wit underlying the strangeness.

#unpopularopinion
I'm not a fan of the kind of satire used in this collection: once I saw what each story was driving at, they just seemed more like dreary exercises, no matter how much violence, fantasy, or dark comedy was piled on. The ones with less overt satirical elements and fantasy were oddly dry, as if they'd been edited to death. I liked one story: 'The Hospital Where', which reads like a real nightmare: wish more were like that one!

Sometimes when words like 'beautiful' get used too often to describe books or movies, I get a little nervous. Is it 'beautiful' because the writer cheated? Bel Canto doesn't cheat: I believed the beauty in this novel. Most are probably familiar with the plot: terrorists take over a private opera performance in the VP's estate in an unnamed South American country. When the takeover gets protracted, a routine establishes itself and...just read it!

Um...okay Goodreads, I guess I'll just have to trust your algorithms on this. Maybe there was some nuance in The Little Prince that I missed?

Absolutely delightful: its classic status is well-earned. It reminded me of an inverted Alice in Wonderland: instead of traveling to an imaginary world, the Little Prince comes from a far-away land to look at what hides beneath the surface of our own world. There are great lessons about the power of empathy, devotion, and why you must never catch yourself thinking like a grown-up.

Not what I was expecting, but I still enjoyed it. I thought the humor landed somewhere between Bill Bryson and David Sedaris (but closer to Bryson). But it was also serious at times, reflecting on what it means to be financially successful, male, and white, while living in Maine (evidently not known for its diversity). It felt honest rather than for show, and for all his talk of being a narcissist, the tone is pleasantly self-deprecating.

This is superficially similar to Year of Magical Thinking, both in content, this focusing on her daughter's death 2 years after her husband's, and in style, obsessive spirals of thoughts & memories. But her focus here is new: she searches her memories of Quintana to understand her wisdom. What did her precociousness as a child say about her upbringing? Her comments about death? And what do the answers reveal about her own views on aging and dying?

Excited to join the #nyrbbookclub this month! I did enjoy this almost-a-pick. As others pointed out, Hardwicke's writing sparkles and made me consider, what does a collection of memories of others say about the memory owner? Or is it a riff on the act of remembering, how it creates these characters, like an author of fiction might? The end struck me as no different from the beginning and the flatness kept it from a pick- otherwise I was intrigued.

#brooklynbookfestival #bookhaul
I've always been resolving to try out small presses, so I'm really excited about this haul. Two of these were on my radar- Vesaas' The Birds from Archipelago (and put on my radar by praise from @BarbaraBB ) and Apostol's Insurrecto from Soho. Also picked up Kincaid's Party: A Mystery (Akashic) for my 2-year-old niece, and Larraquy's Comemadre (Coffee House Press), which I am trying to resist reading immediately.

Lovely day at the #brooklynbookfestival Took advantage of some small press sales, got to see Edwidge Danticat talk about tragedy & trauma in her work (and 2 new to me authors- David Chariandy & Maria Tumarkin) and ended up in the gorgeous church shown here to see Joyce Carol Oates and Marlon James in conversation about a range of topics relevant to their work. Sorry for the lack of corroborating author photos- you'll have to take my word for it 😉

#7covers7days #covercrush Day 7
@merelybookish

Last one: a book of stories that listens back.

This was fun- I didn't really know what my favorite covers in my collection were before choosing them.

@Geeklet feel like playing? Post 7 covers in 7 days, no explanations necessary, and tag a new person each day.

#7covers7days #covercrush Day 6
@merelybookish
@JacintaMCarter want to join in? Post 7 covers in 7 days, no explanations needed, and tag someone new each day.

#7days7covers #covercrush Day 5
@merelybookish
@Susanita if you want to play, 7 covers posted in 7 days, no explanations & tag someone new each day.

#7days7covers #covercrush Day 4
@merelybookish
@GripLitGrl want to play? Post 7 covers in 7 days, no explanation needed, and tag a new person each day.

#7covers7days #covercrush Day3
@merelybookish
@Kimberlone feel like playing? Post 7 covers over 7 days, no explanation needed, and tag a new person every day.

#7days7covers #covercrush Day 2
@merelybookish
I know @Squidapus enjoys a lot of sci-fi and fantasy books with pretty covers- he's tagged if he wants to post one cover per day, no explanations needed and tag someone new each day.

#7covers7days Day 1

Thanks @merelybookish for the tag!

@tournevis not sure if you've already been tagged, but if you want to play, it's 7 covers in 7 days, no explanations needed, & tag someone new each day.

After his newborn brother is diagnosed with a life-threatening genetic condition, a boy begins having dreams where an angel appears, saying they can fix his brother. He is relieved until discovering the 'angels' are actually wasps from a new nest in his backyard and the promise may not be all it appears. As creepy and unnerving as the illustrations suggest. And this is a middle grade book, so parents take note with Halloween coming up 🐝🎃🐝

Tough book to rate. Starts with a bizarre true crime story from 1970s Alabama involving a reverend who killed spouses and family members after taking out life insurance policies in their names. Then...a biography of Harper Lee. Eventually it gets to her work on what would have been her 2nd book, the true story of the murders. But the quick murder mystery start halts too abruptly: I enjoyed learning about Lee's life, but less would have been more.

My rule for the Cup of Unread Authors is I can't draw a new name until I've read one work from the previous name drawn. And the latest author could not be more different from the last pick of Hunter S. Thompson.
Never came across the tagged book growing up, but looking forward to it from all the love it gets.

Thompson was 22 when he wrote this but couldn't get it published until he tried again nearly 40 years later in 1998. The sentences aren't bad, but they are put to poor use. The MC gets a job with the only English-language paper in Puerto Rico, and befriends two other talented yet underappreciated young journalists with violent tendencies. They are bonded by their contempt for the paper, Puerto Rico, and other people. Sexist, racist, and angry 👎

Swamplandia and The World of Darkness are two Florida theme parks in this novel, both given unflattering, behind the scenes portrayals, and somehow I still wanted to visit both. I think Russell's novel explores why we like places like this- how much our imagination can fill in the gaps of what is obviously phony. It's a coming of age novel focusing on the gator-wrestler children of Swamplandia, often funny but also equal parts disturbing 👇

A completely unique reading experience. We meet six friends as children and the perspective wanders between each of them, who think in poetic soliloquies about what they see in nature and how they see their own personalities compared to the others. We follow them into adulthood for select scenes and they do the same sort of thing with adult subjects. The title is well-chosen: Woolf is fascinated by the rhythms of daily life and its repetitions 👇

Although this technically follows a linear timeline starting with the night her husband dies, Didion writes it in spirals, returning over and over to thoughts and memories she had at the time. In doing so, she captures the mental life of grief in exacting detail--all the guilt, detachment, and fantasies that the death is somehow temporary. That Didion was able to write with such insight and clarity about this experience is pretty incredible.

Is it possible this is the first time I've seen 'Na-uh' in print?
I have so many questions:
1) I'm not around kids much...do they still say this?
2) If the answer to #1 is yes, is there common advice to writers to avoid kid-slang? Is there even much other kid-slang that isn't just errors in grammar? I was trying to think of examples but I'm drawing a blank.
3) Is the accepted spelling for the common reply, 'Ya-huh'? Or 'Yuh-huh'?

#Star #AyUpAugust
Hilola Bigtree was a star alligator wrestler and the biggest draw for the gator island theme park of the title. But her death from cancer left the novel's 14-year-old protagonist Ava without a mother and the family's park in danger of bankruptcy. I'm only 77 pages in, but loving this one so far. A little uneasy about the somewhat low Litsy & Goodreads ratings though- hope it doesn't lose steam as it goes 🤞