"Modern Fables" is a sublime collection of short stories, that bring a tear to the eye and warmth to the heart.
The author's writing is heartfelt, tender and compassionate. She can see the exceptional in ordinary people she interacts with, and she has an incredible talent to highlight the fragility and the mightiness of the human being.

Happy World Book Day!

"He loses his wife so he stirs up an army to bring her back to him, costing countless lives and creating countless widows, orphans and slaves. Oenone loses her husband and she raises their son. Which of those is the more heroic act?"

A very powerful novel about mental illness, childhood trauma and women's condition.
Further to repetitive nightmares, Yeong-hye turns vegetarian. This triggers immense pressure from her family, which determines her to stop eating completely. This original, unsettling and expressive story is organized in three chapters, each showing the drama of her deteriorating condition.

A very entertaining and believable story. Another book which would make a nice movie.

Evelyn Hugo's character is such a glamorous, spectacular and unforgettable presence and her love stories are unique and unexpected.

I spent three hours reading this nice mystery novel with a great premise: what if the world and our life are just a simulation?

A time travel agent from 2400 is sent to several periods in the past (1912, 2020, 2200 etc.) in an attempt to investigate an anomaly in the time continuum.

On her deathbed, at 100 years old, Violeta keeps journaling her life for her grandson. She is born in 1920 during the Spanish flu and dies during the coronavirus pandemic. Violeta's autobiography explores a century of an unnamed South American country's turbulent history, her long and intense life, loves, achievements and losses.
Overall enjoyable but easily forgettable read.

A bit too long but nicely written story of three inseparable childhood friends. The novel has it all: mystery, plot twists, dual timelines, beautifully built characters and the complexity of a lifelong friendship.

I enjoyed "Fresh Water for Flowers" more for its emotional impact, but this one is a page turner as well and has its heartwrenching moments.

I loved it. This is definitely not just a light funny book. It portrays wonderfully how difficult it is today to find a partner with whom to build a serious relationship and a family. The story bits about dating apps raise some interesting questions on how viable this option really is, and more importantly about who raised all these boys (maybe entire generations?) who become immature men uncapable to comit to anything and behave manly.

"Pen, Sword, Camisole" was written in 1978. Using satire and comic farce, the plot is set at the beginning of the 1940s in Brazil, at a time when the country had close connections to Germany and places the relationship between politics and art at the center of the story. The Chief of National Security of the regime has the ambition to be elected as a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters to replace a great national poet who died.

I've read this one with a pen in my hand. Extremely useful and insightful for women of all ages, but equally for men! Raising awareness about menopause symptoms and treatments helps women feel less lonely and misunderstood during this new stage, and regain their normal life.

Heart wrenching but necessary account of the civil war in Syria through the eyes of a future refugee. After having lost her family, still a teenager, she continues to experience the horrors first hand while working in a hospital and coping with her traumas.

"When I leave, it won‘t be easy. It‘s going to shred my heart to ribbons and all the pieces will be scattered along Syria‘s shore, with the cries of my people haunting me till the day I die."

Very insightful. Comedian and TV host Trevor Noah tells the story of his childhood and youth in South Africa at the end of the apartheid and the tumultuous years that followed. As a person of color with an African mother and a Swiss father, he tries to make sense of where he belongs, in a society torn by the absurdities of racism and the political system. His brilliant mother sets the education premises which help him navigate towards success.

Loved this one far more than I initially thought I would.
Although it is non-fiction, this book is incredibly well written and engrossing. It is striking how thoroughly and honestly women's complex emotions are illustrated through the stories of just three women. In a way, this novel can be enlightening both for men and women regarding the state of womanhood and sex in the American society and not only.

A lovely short story collection written by an architect who's lived in all the cities where her characters love, live, die, mourn and suffer: Stockholm, Bucharest, New York, Oradea, Barcelona, from the '50s to the present day. With a touch of magic realism, the stories are imbued with signs, mysterious messages and premonitions born in dreams and alternate realities, while the last story ends with a shocking twist like a wake up call to reality.

Many of these essays resonated with me and the funny potrayal of the type-A personality was so honest and relatable. She reminds us how beautiful, scary and brave it is to be a child, a young adult, a parent...

I found ingenious her longing for a time machine allowing us to go back and forth in time and relive our life at different ages and maybe avoid or overcome our mid-life crisis by staying connected with older versions of ourselves.

While I enjoyed "Three Apples Fell From the Sky", I simply loved this one! Her prose is mesmerizing.

In a small town in Armenia, Simon's funeral is attended by all the women who loved him and whom he saved with his love from their disturbingly traumatic destinies:

A fast read but I was not impressed by the plot. It is common, predictable and very unrealistic.

Dense, reflective, philosophical. Longer and shorter personal and fictional stories and a brief history on plastination; an unnerving and haunting dissection of the human body and of human paroxysmal emotions.

"This always happens when she flies: she gets a bird‘s eye view of her whole life, of particular moments that you‘d think on the ground had been completely forgotten. The banal mechanism of the flashback, mechanical reminiscence."

“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

I enjoyed this discussion between famous naturalist Jane Goodall and author Douglas Abrams on the power of hope, how we reconquer it along with trust in our intellect and our capacity for action to create a sustainable world for all species.

This was such a wonderful read!
I particularly loved how the character of the octopus Marcellus was developed; he is a great and exquisite narrator, giving more depth and meaning to the story. His lines are funny, yet he appears for the heart-wrenching reality. Overall, really heart-warming!

I almost can't believe I've read this one; it's called 'Love Without Tears". It looks exactly like a book produced with generative AI or some similar software. But, it's a very useful and well-done summary of famous self-help books on love and relationships published by well-known authors such as Gary Chapman, John and Julie Gottman, Esther Perel etc.

I raced through this book, just couldn't put it down!

Ema, Sofia and David grow with an extremely abusive father. Their mother is helpless and a victim herself. He dies when they are almost teenagers, they are relieved and they try to build lives and families of their own. But they remain haunted by their past and every bit of happiness they seem to achieve collapses under the immense weight of their childhood trauma.

I loved, loved this book! Written using stream of consciousness, this novel depicts Ophanim's life journey marked by his relationship with his mother. With an unusual name of biblical sonority, his story is common yet human and heart-warming, he sees life through a magical lens.

"Earlier a bird has flown through my heart. A small bird, but it's that kind of bird, when it passes, it takes your wonders and even your fears under its wings."

I enjoyed this novel; very informative on the recent painful history of civil war-torn Sri Lanka. Maali Almeida, a photographer who has just died, is trying to solve the mystery of his own death by communicating with his loved ones and helping them publish his photos to expose the atrocities of the war. In the afterlife his mission is guided by two opposed forces, Dr. Ranee and Mahakali, each symbolizing a dimension of his country and of its past.

This book is basically based on the presentation of 8 actual case studies of families with a large diversity of multi-generational common issues and traumas.
While each and every one of these family stories is interesting and insightful in its own way, I couldn't seize any real and useful conclusion which could be applicable beyond these particular cases, except for some well-known and common sense advice on how to improve family dynamics.

I read two collections of short stories, all revolving around love. I enjoyed some of them more than others and I found particularly poignant those on love outside of marriage and on failure in love. It is interesting to see how the course of love and relationships were dictated by women's condition and status at the end of the 19th century, a different world indeed.

It's my Litsyversary 🎉🥂📖📚 Wow, 5 years already!
Such a great place to be!

I found this one as an ebook and as I haven't seen the movie, I thought I should give it a try. It turned out to be just as captivating as a film. The prose is soft and beautiful and produces so many different emotions. In 19th century traditional French countryside, we see how women's lack of choice led to the decline of an aristocratic lady who can't but remain passive while her life progressively worsens.

I enjoyed this collection of soul-stirring short stories. They focus more on characters and emotions than on the plot itself, but they are beautifully written and carry the unspoken burden of a poignant reality.

Such remarkable depiction of the atmosphere governing New York‘s high society at the end of the 19th century, of its etiquette and social conventions at a time when appearances mattered enormously and the wealthy were expected to conduct themselves by these norms, even if it implied acting against their true feelings. The love triangle does not impress much throughout the story but the ending, which is truly brilliant, makes it sparkle.

"It isn‘t about changing the mechanics of economics. It is about changing the ideas, the dogmas that have driven economics for centuries: debt and fear, insufficiency, divide and conquer. It is about revolution. The transition from a death economy to a life economy is truly about a change in consciousness — a consciousness revolution."

Another four sweet stories with a bit of a twist to make the dialogue between characters returning to their past unexpected in the most realistic way possible.

I've just realized I enjoy these time travel café stories so much because they are incredibly therapeutic; these short books leave the reader with a sense that people are able to heal emotionally if they choose to do so.

In real life they also make me think of the systemic family constellations therapy as a possible substitute for what the café facilitates.

What a lovely collection of essays! A great capacity to make use of some of the most common things, such as a relationship, a photo, an online game or a breakup, to attract the reader's empathy and compassion. My favorite was the one about stepmothers.

"Don't assume the contours of another person's heart. Don't assume its desires."

"one more definition of love: committing to a story you can't fully imagine when it begins."

This one's got fabulous illustrations and it's equally enticing for children and adults.

Such a heart-warming novel on the pursuit of happiness and how we fail in love.
Cesare is 77, an age when each day alive is a gift, and he realizes it might be his last chance to do things he wouldn't have dared to before. He finds himself trapped between the struggle to restore his relationship with his children, to improve his personal life and the few long-lasting friendships, and the attempt to save a young neighbor from domestic violence.

It is quite challenging to read such a memoir; it requires time and patience and a certain state of mind, an openness to absorb the unfolding of a life in a different era, down to the tiniest detail.
“Alone: for the first time I understood the terrible significance of that word. Alone without a witness, without anyone to speak to, without refuge. The breath in my body, the blood in my veins, all this hurly-burly in my head existed for nobody.”

Briefly, the point is that in a culture centered on faking positivity and optimism, anxiety and depression spike, as people are not allowed to show and voice their pain and problems and accept that human sorrow is natural and inevitable.
I found this one rather boring and repetitive, maybe because I come from a culture where the role of a bittersweet state of mind is already acknowledged in overcoming pain and responding to grief with compassion.

Very eye-opening examination of codependency and the reasons why people develop this almost addiction to things, behaviors and other people, as a result of unsatisfied emotional needs and which affects so many of us. The book also recommends a recovery plan for those who intend to break the cycle and escape the labyrinth of codependency.

Great book!

“Individuals who are codependent “dance” so well with individuals who are narcissists because their pathological personalities or “dance styles” are complementary. In other words, they are perfectly matched partners. Their well-matched dance preferences bond them together in a resilient and lasting partnership, even if one or both partners are unhappy, resentful or angry.“

The prescription consists of seven really down to earth and easily applicable recommendations to keep a couple's connection alive, as the authors also say:
“Here's our hope for you, after this week: That you felt a little closer to your partner after including these practices in your day. That you two laughed together at some point. That you felt that warm glow of connection, the cha-ching! of coins dropping into the emotional bank account.“

In the 1960s, 18-year old Victor Chmara is afraid of something and is hiding in a small French town close to Switzerland where he pretends to be a count of Russian and Egyptian origin. In this place populated by strange characters, he meets Yvonne. The time spent with her continues to haunt him and years later he returns in an attempt to find her.

This psychological and metaphysical prose was published in the 1930s. It feels like a confession, where the outside world is perceived as too common, boring and useless and the narrator struggles to escape it by hiding in his inner world, where anxiety, unrest and morbid thoughts torture him.

"Was I capable of being happy in solitude? I didn‘t think so. Was I capable of being happy in general? That‘s the kind of question, I think, that is best not asked."

This is not the usual Murakami but I enjoyed it tremendously! Seven short stories about men and their experiences and relationships with women, that simply strike a chord.

Although the book's title is 'Ricky of the Tuft', it does not have much to do with Perrault's tale, or at least it has more than a modern and funny twist.

Déodat is an extremely intelligent and terribly ugly young man. Trémière is an otherwordly beautiful and discrete young lady. Their qualities make them both society outcasts. They are destined to meet.

I like her sarcastic style and exquisite approach on common philosophical themes with unusual and peculiar characters and circumstances.

Zoile and Astrolabe experience a love story so unique and disappointing that Zoile decides to comit suicide by highjacking an airplane to destroy the Eiffel Tour.

"To love a place, you have to see it from above. This must be why we imagine God above the Earth: otherwise how would he be able to love us?"

"Getting back the stories"

Such a sweet illustrated short story for kids and grown-ups with a game included. Redescovering the magic of telling and listening to stories reconnects us with a joyful life.

"I am writing about my father in the past tense, and I cannot believe I am writing about my father in the past tense."

"Grief is not gauzy; it is substantial, oppressive, a thing opaque. The weight is heaviest in the mornings, post-sleep: a leaden heart, a stubborn reality that refuses to budge. I will never see my father again. Never again. It feels as if I wake up only to sink and sink. "

I wish I read this one last year when I lost my father.

So much food for thought...

"Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision."

"Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love. Where this active concern is lacking, there is no love."