The title of my next chapter. 🤣

I could make a list!

Oh, how I enjoyed Banville‘s writing style.

But then he ruined it with a completely unforgivable section that felt like an assault. All the trigger warnings here. It utterly spoiled the whole work for me. I‘m still recovering.

Thankfully, my trusty cat Scully is here to comfort me. Here she is looking particularly fetching and entirely goofy.

An utterly joyful book about a horse drawn traveling bookshop and the adventures of its human and animal companions (a dog named Bock - short for Boccaccio!).

This book made me smile.

I start a new job at Waterstones book shop this morning! I am absolutely bricking it.

If you‘re the prayerful type I would really appreciate your “thoughts and prayers”!

I‘m half an hour early, so I‘m hoping this cozy mystery and some cinnamon on my cappuccino will help.

Close up of part of my Bookish Cats puzzle.

Some of the other squares had Romeow and Juliet and Charlie and the Catnip Factory. 😻

This cute little Cyclops was my favourite.

My husband has been begging me for YEARS to read The Silmarillon. He has this beautiful and expensive edition that makes it impossible for me to say no.

So far, I‘ve been taking notes to try to keep the characters straight! Some of the writing and ideas are absolutely splendid (Niessa, anyone?), but it is certainly challenging to read.

Any other Silmarillion fans out there?

I was disappointed with this book. There were some intriguing characters, (especially Irene and Laura), but I think they book eventually fell flat. I loved Into the Water and enjoyed Girl on the Train, but there were too many story lines that weren‘t properly developed.

I could list many trigger warnings, but in particular there‘s a completely unnecessary scene of extreme animal cruelty.

Essentially, I think it‘s a sadly forgettable book.

Apologies if this has been posted, but I think this is hilarious!

What is it about bad parents in Victorian literature?

Poor, put upon Margaret Hale does everything for her weakling of a mother and dithering father.

What are your nominations for bad parents in literature?

I‘m still trying to teach Scully cat not to chew on my books.

#CatsOfLitsy

SING FOR ME!!!

I feel like the Phantom of the Opera shouting at Christine when he‘s taken her to his underground lair.

Good morning, Littens!

I have found an oasis of calm this morning to try to power through the behemoth that is Dombey and Son.

I hope you all have a great day! ❤️📚❤️

Ben Aaronovitch!

Please please please write a spin-off series focusing on Elsie Winstanley and Dr. Postmartin.

Please please pretty please!!!

Each September I read a Dickens novel, and this year‘s selection is Dombey and Son. I was surprised to realise that I only have one more novel left to read after this, so it‘ll be Martin Chuzzlewit next year!

I love how this coffee shop honours those clever goats and that even cleverer Ethiopian goatherd, Kaldi, who discovered coffee.

Thank you, Goats! ❤️🐐❤️☕️❤️

🤣🤣🤣

From the For Reading Addicts Facebook page.

I hit the Alexander McCall Smith jackpot at the library today!

I lost my job last week and am about to begin my penultimate shift (final shift tomorrow), so I‘m grateful I‘ll have something joyous to read.

I‘m OK, as we‘re not in desperate straits, but it is disappointing that I risk that I took to put myself forward for the job isn‘t working out.

Here‘s to Failing Forward and finding the next adventure! 🥳

Very good indeed.

This book would be an excellent tool for classrooms of middle grade students and teens. By discussing displacement the book gives a greater understanding to the reader of the reasons why people must flee, which I hope would invoke compassion and a sense of identification with people in this position.

The book is well written and thoughtful.

Totally nonsensical, this book is impossible to rate, or even to understand in any coherent way. However, dipping in and out of the nonsense evokes a strange joy.

I‘ll leave you with the book‘s final thought, and if you figure out what this means you are a genius:

“The care with which there is an incredible justice and likeness, all this makes a magnificent asparagus, and also a fountain.”

Thanks, @SerialReader !

#MagnificentAsparagus

A New Yorker article from 1934 describing Gertrude Stein‘s driving ability, (or lack of it!) and comparing it with her writing style.

This gave me a chuckle as these poems are a HOT MESS.

Sorry.

I couldn‘t resist. 🤣💀

(From the For Reading Addicts Facebook page.)

My goal for the #20in4 Readathon is 20 half hours, totalling ten hours! At the end of Day 3 I‘m nearly there.

My time was supplemented today by listening to the audiobook of the excellent Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu. What a book!

Thanks again, @Andrew65 for organising the Readathon. I hope everyone else is enjoying it as much as I am!

This quiet, understated book brims over with rich descriptions of the landscapes and wildlife of 1950s Australia, as seen through the eyes of two recent immigrants. This was a gentle, thoughtful, kind love story that made me feel wistful.

Shute‘s writing is a dream, but his portrayal of post-war England was definitely more of a nightmare, which he oddly blamed on the National Health Service. I‘ll overlook that weird anomaly!

#20in4
@Andrew65

I‘ve made a good start with the #20in4 Readathon!

I‘m hoping to read for 20 half hours, totalling 10 hours.

I‘m really enjoying this book set in Australia and England, as well as an audiobook by British astronaut Tim Peake.

Thanks for the encouragement, @Andrew65 ! I hope everyone taking part in the Readathon has had a great day!

This book is STRANGE.

I think I should wander about and randomly spout off lines like,

“The sudden spoon is the wound in the decision.”

🥄🥄🥄🥄🥄🥄🥄🥄🥄🥄🥄🥄🥄🥄🥄🥄

This was absolutely excellent. I learned so much, and have so much left to learn.

I will keep learning, and keep trying to “love fully”, as Jason Reynolds wrote in the Afterword.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I had a little moment when reading this when I read the word “lifeline” as li-FELINE.

#CatsOnTheBrain

As ever with this author, this book was a gentle, charming read.

Paul and his cousin Chloe are staying in a rural French village with the unlikely distinction of being the home of the second worst restaurant in France. Can Paul become a culinary hero? Can such simple things be considered heroic?

Alexander McCall Smith always paints kindness as a heroic endeavour.

Underdogs is an engaging early teen dystopia where the heroes are all neurodivergent kids. Written by a neurodivergent author, Bonnello also leads the excellent Facebook group Autistic Not Weird.

I really liked this book. It had some typical first novel issues (the start was jittery), but it was great to read a book where neurodivergent people are the heroes!

And it had a villain with the unlikely name of Keith.

#OwnVoices
#Neorodivergent

Simply wonderful.

The book was just OK but the cover is absolutely scrumptious.

Having to work today = anxiety last night = very little sleep = a slightly fractious, heartsore me this morning.

I have 30 minutes before I have to leave so I‘m going to savour a tiny Italian pastry on a tiny Japanese plate and begin reading a book with a beautiful cover.

My husband is a big Tolkien fan and just took part in a research project for Marquette University.

Are you a fan? Would you like to be part of an oral history project, explaining your thoughts and experiences reading Tolkien? See the link below:

https://eu.jsonline.com/story/news/2019/03/24/marquette-launches-tolkien-fandom-...

A better photo from Yinka Shonibare‘s exhibition of textile covered books at the Tate in London.

#BooksAreBeautiful

The Tate Gallery in London has an exhibition of more than 6,000 beautifully covered books by textile artist Yinka Shonibare.

The video on their Facebook website is stunning!

#BooksAreBeautiful

The very first lines of this book of poetry.

We‘re off to a good start!

On @SerialReader , there are these lovely little encouragements each time you finish a section.

This one is my favourite.

Nerd Alert!!!!!! 🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨

#SerialReader

Can a story save your life?

I was completely unfamiliar with any of these stories, so they hadn‘t lost their power to shock & (sometimes) entertain. I learned about embedded narratives, which is essentially a story within a story within a story.

These are ancient tales, reflecting ancient ideas. Life and especially limb are held quite cheaply, and the racism and sexism are absolutely rampant.

So many amputations!

Thanks again, @SerialReader

Happy St. Patrick‘s Day from #NorthernIreland .

A local independent bookshop has put together a great list of books about Ireland, North and South. Happy reading!

https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/happy-st-patrick-s-day

The book I‘ve tagged here is from one of my favourite Northern Irish authors, David Park.

What a great thing it is to discover a local author whose work blows you away!

Jo Zebedee is a writer from #NorthernIreland . The tagged book is a novel of hers that I haven‘t read. This book is a compilation of flash fiction, and it‘s full of wicked, tense, other worldly sci-fi. As with all compilations, some stories are less enjoyable than others, but that didn‘t detract from the overall effect.

I‘m delighted to have found a new local author!

This is Tombland Alley in Norwich, England, where this book was set during Elizabethan times.

Check out the wonky window on the building!

This series of doorstop sized books represents historical fiction at its finest.

(From the Visit Norwich Facebook page.)

Hi, @StillLookingForCarmenSanDiego !

Here are my choices:

📚Library

📚Read only stand-alone

📚 Read by the fireplace

📚Live in a fantasy book (that‘s a hard one, because my heart says classic, but the misogyny would get to me in a classic book)

📚Signed edition

📚 Read a book with a cliffhanger

📚 Villain in a favourite book

Good game, @DarkMina !

I misread this as saying, “He was pursued by homicidal LLAMAS, you know.”

🤣

Despite racist elements consistent with the time it was written (1915), this book has many beautifully written passages. It‘s more of a fictional hagiography of a folk hero as opposed to a clear biography of a real man named John Chapman.

I was enthralled by the story of the folk hero as a child, inspired by the idea of a person who loved the natural, human and animal worlds.

I‘ve included a link to some facts about Chapman‘s life below. 👇

Johnny Appleseed seemed to respect and have good relationships with American Indian groups. (I‘ll look into this more thoroughly on non-fiction sites).

However, this book WAS written in 1915 and is full of an undercurrent of white supremacy. It is of its time, with passages like the one above where a Chief is separating from his child admonishing her to “Grow up white.”

Older literature can be problematic for this reason.

“Trees had become to him sentient and beneficent things, drawing their life from the same Mother Earth that supported himself, and reaching up with love and trust to the same kind sky. So, although birds flitted about in shabby coats, silent and unseen, and animals fed in secret places on nature‘s abundance, he was companioned on the day march and the night watch by the trees, statuesque and serene.”

This book reminds me of books I would have read in primary school in America in the 1980s.

Originally published in 1915 (my copy is from 1943), it‘s beautifully bound & illustrated, & incredibly earnest! If a character is good then they are very, very good.

Johnny Appleseed always enchanted me as a child, and as I learned more about him he seemed to me like a man ahead of his time. I‘ll finish this fictionalised account, then check the facts.

From the For Reading Addicts Facebook page.

🤣