Happy Pride Month to all the other queer Littens and allies!! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

I‘ve started the month off with Stag Dance, and I‘m hoping to get several more queer books in. 🤞🏻 that #bookspin lands on some, too!

Another fantastic month of choices from @AardvarkBookClub !! I was so disappointed that #botm didn‘t offer much in the way of choices for Pride Month, but #aardvark delivered with 3 options!! So excited for all of these!!

Also, I just finished last month‘s choice Immaculate Conception and gave it 5⭐️ if you‘re looking for another book. It‘s still available. Lots to think about re: friendship, art, jealousy, technology, ethics. Just really great!!

What is Litsy thinking about liar and admitted AI user James Frey being a #botm choice? TBH, the subject matter seems a bit lame, too. Swinging has been done at least since The Ice Storm. This sort of sounds like a rip off.

https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/pompidou-plus/magazine/article/james-frey-i-use...

My #botm choices this month! I was on the fence about A Family Matter, but then I saw @squirrelbrain ‘s review and picked it up.

King of Ashes is our awesome #CampLitsy25 August pick, and Other Side sounded like a nice light summer read.

FYI #BOTM peeps! Our August #CampLitsy25 choice, King of Ashes, looks to be a June BOTM pick! I think I‘ll cancel my preorder and get it here. Hope you‘ll join us then!

Weekend book thoughts!

Audition, our first #CampLitsy25 book, finished it yesterday. I‘m not sure I “liked” it, but it is going to be killer for discussion!! I can‘t wait to hear @squirrelbrain ‘s thoughts on questions!

Goddess Complex. Started it this morning doing the inevitable Saturday morning jobs (laundry, shopping, blah), and I‘m loving it. Kind of a bit millennial lost in her 30s, divorcing when everyone else is ⬇️

I‘ve been using Libro.fm solely for this year and partially for a few more, and I‘ve hit a point of having the same number of finished and unfinished books. 😁🎉 Still not anywhere close to the 900+ I own on Audible, but I love supporting my local bookstore.

I‘m really enjoying Run for the Hills! Fun fact: Marin Ireland narrates both it and My Friends. I like her as a narrator. She‘s one that will swing me to the audio side.

I was already pretty unimpressed by this fairly unorganized hodgepodge of things under wellness umbrella, but when she called Celiac Disease an allergy and not an autoimmune condition and said that gluten intolerance was a “more mild form of it,” she lost me as a reader. Period. Glad I didn‘t pay for this. If you and your editor and your publisher are that lazy that you can‘t do basic factchecking, how can I trust the rest of it?

Once again I will be your camp counselor for July, and I am so excited to discuss these books!

I have already read Death of the Author, and I have been dying to discuss it because it is so unique. Woodworking is new to me, and I‘m so excited for us to explore it together.

I‘ll be posting page breaks later, but I hope you can join me July 5/6 and 12/13 for Author and July 19/20 and 26/27 for Woodworking! 🏕️😁 #CampLitsy25

Happy #botm day! The irises are blooming, and it‘s finally sunny! The Bombshell is my #bookspin or #doublespin, so I‘m starting there.

And Kate from Kate & Frida (tagged below) is a big Colwin fan and just mentioned this book specifically!

Finally! I have time to photograph and share my Parnassus stack (along with a little Vance clapback wood art 😉). I wish I had gotten the tee I likes, but next time. 🤞🏻

I try to plan a couple and choose a couple by happy accident. I knew I wanted the signed Audition and Kate & Frida. The Millet was an easy choice because it‘s short stories. Screaming was one I pulled randomly off the fiction shelves. I turned to a page in the middle and was ⬇️

Last minute #bookspin list after a great day in Nashville. Preview of my Parnassus buys at 18-20!!

So I looked at the solutions to the clues on Reddit (generally someone has them there by the third ones) and was on the fence about Original Daughter. Of course I got it! 😂😂 Four from #botm plus three from #aardvark plus whatever I buy at Parnassus today. (I already have three staff picks I like.) 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️😂 I‘ve lost my mind in the best possible way!!!!

A great month for #botm imo! Thank you to the person who nominated The Bombshell for #CampLitsy25 and put it on my radar! Speaking of CL it has been so good seeing everyone‘s votes. Check @BarbaraBB profile for a link to the longlist and voting form. There is definitely still time to vote!

I am finally starting to feel a bit better and am hopefully headed to Parnassus and Nashville for an afternoon off later this week!

It is so wonderful to log in after celebrating my mom‘s 80th birthday with family to see all these #CampLitsy25 nominations!! Wow!! I probably won‘t be able to get to the all before tomorrow, but I wanted to quickly share my nominations. I am so excited to be doing this with @BarbaraBB @squirrelbrain again!!

Let us know if you‘d like to join us this summer for reading and discussing six amazing books!

My 3 other noms tagged below.

This is one of the most shocking and disturbing books I‘ve ever read, and it makes me want to delete every meta app on my phone.

Sarah talked her way into a job at Facebook to direct their policy and contact with other countries. She entered as an idealist with hopes of social media connecting the world. In 2017, she‘s facing knowledge of the spying apps that Facebook has specifically develop so the Chinese Communist Party can ⬇️

Another month, another full @AardvarkBookClub box! Their picks were so much better than BOTM (which I skipped) this month. So excited for all of these. I love that #aardvark doesn‘t shy away from darker books!

NGL the last month has been HARD! For the first time, I didn‘t read my #bookspin or #doublespin. It started with all three of us catching norovirus. Because of my MCAS, I have still not recovered and it has caused further restrictions on foods I can eat. (No more processed food, dairy, eggs or gelatin - so no more animal-derived food of any kind for me)! 🤦🏻‍♀️

We also had a massive hail storm which caused a total loss of one car, severe ⬇️

Once again, super late posting about monthly challenges!! Luckily one on my #roll100 choices was my #bookspin! I think my #doublespin was on the #camplitsy24 longlist, and that‘s why I bought it! Hoping I can get to Turbulence as well because it‘s a favorite short story collection.

Right now I‘m reading Mothers and Sons by Adam Haslett from the library, and my #botm choice Care and Feeding by Bourdain‘s assistant Laurie Woolever. ⬇️

A few really good ones, a lot of good ones, and a few disappointments. I read all three of my February #aardvark choices in the month of February! 🎉🎉

Probably my lowest reading month in 5 years! But there were a few I loved. Really enjoying Rachel Harrison! The other two are novel-in-stories type books that fit my short story theme this year.

It‘s going to be a good month!! #aardvark

Well, in keeping with the theme of things going wrong this year…

I had put my membership on pause, but when I saw this Bourdain-adjacent book I have been following for a year was a pick, I unpaused. But it wouldn‘t let me add any more books like Liquid, which sounded cool, or Wild Dark Shore. So I ordered and called an hour later when customer support opened to see if I could add to my box. Nope label printed done and done. ⬇️

So it‘s been a rough year so far, but March is my birthday month, and I‘m hoping to take a day trip to Nashville or Louisville. I‘d like to get to one of the longer books in my TBR read this month (All the Colors…, Playworld, My Friends, etc.), so I threw a spot for that on. If I don‘t pick a February aardvark, 20 will be a wildcard spot. The hints are pointing at some books I‘m interested in, though! #bookspin #doublespin

I loved both my #bookspin and #doublespin this month. Summerwater has rightfully received a lot of love here. Shanghailanders also in that novel-in-stories vibe with the story of a Chinese/Japanese parents with three daughters living in Shanghai after the parents met as young adults in Paris. The story is told in reverse chronological order. I don‘t think that plot device added anything, but the novel was still great! Life update ⬇️

I did do a #bookspin list at the beginning of the month and never posted it. I saw that Summerwater (an old fave from my #roll100) and Shanghailanders (a new find at BN) were chosen.

Things are still crazy here. We‘ve gotten Dad mostly settled in the nursing home (after his second major stroke), and Mom or I is visiting every day. Today, I got clearance to bring Molly, and she came with me. It‘s just still a lot logistically and emotionally. ⬇️

Rare that I see my hometown mentioned (even obliquely) in a book! We‘re known for barbecuing mutton, and I think we have the best burgoo in the South. It‘s a type of hunter‘s stew that generally has 3 meats - a small mammal, a large mammal, and a bird. (A common combination is venison, pheasant, and squirrel (or rabbit).)

In the midst of chaos, there are always books. My dad has had another stroke. It is a long story that I am still too exhausted to tell fully. Mom and I are working to get him in a nursing home next week. Idk guys. Life is never fair.

Filled my @AardvarkBookClub box 💜💜 #aardvark

@BarbaraBB and @squirrelbrain I‘d love to hear from you if you have time, but I can‘t promise a quick reply. 😘😘

Couldn‘t pass up the Ivy! BOTM, have you sucked me back in?

I‘ve mentioned a couple of times that I read all of Bourdain‘s books last year. His still photographer is doing a sale of these fairly reasonably priced prints ($120 US shipping included), and I ended up buying 3 (at his writing desk) and 4 (the iconic middle finger). After all that time with him last year, it‘ll be nice to have him near my bookshelves! Sale ends tomorrow.

http://www.davidscottholloway.com/bourdain-print-sale

Thank you @TheAromaofBooks !! 💜😃 what a great #bookspin prize! Thank you for continuing to keep Litsy spinning.

I had just said to @BarbaraBB in a DM that I wanted this to be the year or the short story, so I am very excited to have this!!

I reworked my #roll100 list earlier this month, and boy am I happy about it!
1-50 is short story collections I‘d like to reread - like Summerwater and Faraway World.
51-75 is new short story collections on my TBR shelf.
76-100 is other books I‘d like to reread. Aesthetica is an early @AardvarkBookClub selection that I‘m excited to revisit. I hope I can get to all/most of these next month!

Oh yeah! Hendrix delivers way more than a horror novel with this one. It‘s an indictment of the treatment of pregnant teens prior to the 1990s couched in a horror framework. He empathetically tells the story women forced to relinquish their children. When four of these teens meet a witch at the bookmobile, they get more than they bargain for while enacting revenge on the owners, doctors, and staff at this home for weyward girls. Flew through this!

It is terrible when parents use their children for fame and income from social media. Shari‘s mom led the family‘s popular YouTube channel and mined every family moment for content. Then her mother fell in with an aspiring Mormon cult leader around Shari‘s departure for college. Four of her siblings still lived at home through the nightmare of her mother‘s descent. (She‘s now in prison.) I respected Shari for leaving her minor sibs out of it, ⬇️

Just a great full-cast audiobook. Lots of enjoyable reveals. Characters to love and hate. Not a perfect book but one worth reading

Cate Kay is the pseudonym of an author running from her past. When she cuts ties with a manager, she finds her literary agent wants her to step out of the shadows and lay it all out. This is her memoir told from her perspective and also by people who have loved her, hated her, and manipulated her.

Some books are just plain inspiring, and this is one for me. It‘s the companion to Don‘t Cry for Me. In DCFM, Isaac‘s father writes about his parenting mistakes as a traditional Southern Black man in the 1970s raising an effeminate son. Here, Isaac explores the ways his father supported him that he didn‘t realize and appreciate during his father‘s lifetime. It‘s a really beautiful companion set of stories. Highly recommend! ⬇️

The organ recipient getting involved in the donor‘s family‘s life is an enjoyable trope for me, so it was no surprise I rated this highly!

Rosie is a romantic and when she loses a long-term bf, she‘s heartbroken. But she finds out she‘s developed cardiomyopathy, too, and needs a transplant. Her donor is the wife of a local author. She starts corresponding with him by anonymous email, but his wife‘s death may not have been an accident. #aardvark

I went in with expectations a bit too high because i just gave her last book (tagged below) 5⭐️ in the Fall. This book deals heavily with suicide as about half of it is a woman trying to write the correct suicide note to her friends and family. Some reveals in the second half 🤐 negatively changed the way I saw the characters, and I think that contributed to this being a more mid-range pick. I do want to reread knowing what happens at the end.

McCorkle is an experienced and talented short story writer. These contained all the elements that should make a great short story. But despite the competent writing, these didn‘t really sing to me. There was nothing particularly memorable or special about them. Low pick.

This is the start of Small Rain. It‘s something, I think, anyone who has been to a US ER with chronic illness/pain would recognize. I was just there going through this the week before Christmas.

What Chuck Klosterman did for The Nineties, Shade does for the 2000s, which she counts from 1997-2008. She looks mainly at pop culture trends, but she looks deeply at them and how they were shaped by national and global forces like the fall of the Soviet Union, the rise of big tech, and the lead up the global recession. Highly recommend!!

It‘s rare that an author can pull off a funny thriller. Give me a Weekend At Bernie‘s element, and I‘m sold!

David goes on a wonderful date only to wake up next to a dead man. He enlists the help of his literary agent to deal with the body, but all she sees is good material for his next book. Once they find out more about his date, they realize they‘re in deep sh!t!!

5+⭐️ I always worry about overselling a book here, but this #toblonglist choice is one of the best books I‘ve ever read. Ten years of PhD research about Allende‘s and Pinochet‘s regimes in Chile culminated in a novel that perfectly captures the fates of an American boy and his Chilean girlfriend when the coup happens. The story is told in sections with three MCs that each illuminate different faces of survivors and their families. Just read it!

5⭐️ count me among the Littens heaping praise on this #tob25 choice! A perfect linked short story collection bringing together New England‘s past and present.

There is still snow here, and it is snowing again! Very unusual for west Kentucky. My friends with kids are going stir crazy as Christmas break just keeps going. Snortles the Snow Pig is starting to get a bit tired of it, too!

This one hit close to home. Like Maddy, I was diagnosed with bipolar in my 20s. While my manic episodes weren‘t quite so crazy, I related to the isolation she felt and (now that I‘m older) the fears her mother had. Once again, Genova hits the perfect note as a neuroscientist and novelist.

Maddy is a student when she starts having bipolar symptoms. She develops an interest in comedy, but her manic episodes make her family fear it‘s not realistic.

I did not know much about Gypsy Rose until I watched The Act on Hulu several years ago. What terror she must‘ve lived through as her mother slowly took her body and stunted her mind through Munchausen by proxy. She wrote about how that isolation made her think there was no way out besides leaning on her violent internet boyfriend. It‘s sad that she felt more free in prison than out. I‘m glad she has supportive family around her now.

Probably because I don‘t care as much about beauty as pop culture, this essay collection didn‘t have as much impact on me as Tacky, but if you want to reflect on how beauty trends affect women, this essay collection is for you. Written by an Allure beauty editor, she separates the hype from the more timeless, the dangerous from the worthwhile, and looks at things (as an Asian-American) with an eye towards positivity and inclusivity.

Fantastic love letter to all things tacky. King looked at some of the tackiest pieces of pop culture in the 2000s (like the Canadian teen soap Degrassi: Next Generation I have on streaming now and my strangely beloved Jersey Shore and ANTM) and expounds on their cultural impact and impact on her own life. If you secretly love trashy shows and still dress as a guidette for Halloween, this is the book for you!

This book about a controlling cult for yuppie Manhattanites was my first read of the year (and I‘m reviewing it on the 10th 😬). It started good but quickly became dull. I think it came down to a lack of concrete examples of the bad behavior of the leader. It somehow got caught up in the tedium of daily life and lacked any kind of punch. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Find me on the storygraph! Same handle. 👍🏻😁

Molly, who we‘ve renamed Snortles the Snow Pig, is enjoying the weather, but it‘s really been difficult for the rest of us. My Wednesday surgery will have to be moved, and we were without help for dad all weekend. I‘ve been reading and even finished one of the best books I‘ve ever read (Short War by Lily Meyer) and another 5⭐️ (History of Sound). Bodes well for the year! Reviews soon!!