Current read. I have another Maisie Dobbs waiting for me but trying to be disciplined and finish this first. Lots of events I never knew about. I have to go to Cape Town for 3 nights on Sunday so hoping to make progress with the library books I so energetically borrowed 😬

I really enjoyed this one, as I do most Maggie O'Farrells! I suppose the misunderstood mental illness storyline is not completely new but this was well done without being too heavyhanded, I think. And her writing is just so good. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I feel like I've been seeing posts on Maisie every time I'm on Litsy lately, and made the happy discovery that my library has at least the first 3 books. I can understand now why these books are so deeply loved and admired. It was really a light but very special read 💜💜💜

It's Jill Paton Walsh, so if course it was incredibly thought-provoking and philosophical. A proper Art of Soul book, @BarbaraJean. I finished it in the midnight hours when I couldn't sleep and haven't been able to stop thinking about it. Beautiful writing, highly recommended. ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2

1. My mom is in town and I need to try to see her one evening. My children are with their dad so mostly working.
2. Ceylon tea with milk.
3. Usually scraps of paper, whatever is to hand 🙈
4. Tagged. I have a Jill Paton Walsh to start after this.

Thanks for the tag, @Monica5 !

I read this story over 20 years ago, loved it and couldn't find a copy again until I found the volume Tales from the perilous realm at the library on Saturday. It was a lovely reread although I was more deeply moved the first time.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ for the beautiful writing, the nature descriptions, the shrewd and true observations on people. The hermit character and his beliefs were just a tad too obscure for me, and at one point the father's reminiscences were a bit much. Nevertheless enjoyable, thought-provoking and well done.

"I suppose I've thrown in my lot with love, and don't know any other way to go on breathing. I embrace this world... and suffer it consciously for its compensations, and fully expect to awake one day to the consequences of the bargain I've struck, since life, eventually, closes in."

In Afrikaans, Holy Saturday is called Quiet Saturday. My children are with their dad and aside from going to the farmer's market this morning, which was crazy busy, I don't have anything planned and I got into bed with my book. David Guterson is really my jam - his books don't have to be perfect in every way for the beautiful writing to move me.

I enjoyed it and it was a fun distraction but ultimately I was disappointed, I'm afraid. I feel like I've had enough of British crime writers needing to make their twist, their big secret, some kind of sex/kink thing. The Atticus Pünd novel was fun but the ending fell flat for me. I can understand why others loved it, though. ⭐⭐⭐

"All" you need to get out of a reading slump is a fun book ?

I have a day off after a horrible few weeks, and tomorrow is a public holiday because we won the Rugby World Cup (only in South Africa!) so I'm enjoying a bit of time with my girls. Sadly the water slide at this park with a shallow pool is broken, but they're stull having fun.

This was a really good read. At times I felt desperately sad for her, and, depressingly, I could relate a little to her mental health struggle. I realised I knew shockingly little about her life and death, and the author's investigation was fascinating. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Another excellent Litsy recommendation that I thoroughly enjoyed. I would not have fared well on any expedition into the Amazon 😂

I hope I can blame being in survival mode in 2021 for missing this Booker winner entirely. I got to see the play based on the book last night and it was absolutely amazing. A brilliant commentary on South Africa's complicated history.

I saw the movie for the first time a few months ago and I loved the book. Just beautiful.

This was wonderful! I learned a ton and really enjoyed the journey through all the different theories of how the Polynesians came to be. My absolute favourite part was the description of the journey by traditional navigational techniques and the young Hawaiian guy that learned how to do it in his own way, using his gut. There is just so so much we don't know or understand about human intuition and ways of sensing things. A highly recommended read.

I was browsing Scribd for something light yesterday and thought hmmm, this is such a classic and I've never read it. Joke's on me because I did, possibly in translation - I remember the mom being from Georgia, because I didn't understand US states yet and thought it was Georgia next to Russia 😂😂😂 And I remember the sister wearing a see-through blouse to church. A sweet Sunday reread. I didn't know the book was based on a real girl who died.

Now I, too, have read this wonderful classic. This edition, which I got secondhand from someone, has a box it slots into, although even despite that the dust cover is terribly torn.

I became fully immersed and emotionally involved in this world and loved it.

One thing I don't like about many non-fiction books is that they sometimes carry you along because the subject is interesting, not because the writing is stellar.

Anyway, even though the writing was a bit bland sometimes, I really did enjoy this one. I have a friend who was an Vietnamese orphan who was adopted by a US couple and though I don't know enough details, of course the description of Operation Babylift made me think of her so much.

I may be the only weirdo who gets hung up on details like these. Did they give them actual powdered milk, not formula? How old were these babies? What had they been fed if not milk? So many questions 😅

I moved house on Monday (owner is selling the place I was renting) and I have to admit to throwing out old notebooks quite ruthlessly. I just feel so much has changed in my whole outlook on life+I want to look forward - plus I love my new place but it doesn't have tons of storage space.

Anyway I found a notebook earlier in which I wrote on the first page:

Books often work like a key to unknown rooms in one's own castle.

I wonder who wrote it 💜

I liked the premise from a Litsy review and found it on Scribd but I just can't. The writing reminds me of the terrible novella I'm trying to translate - using the characters's names too much, each sentence not bad in any specific way I can pinpoint, just... Mediocre.

I had a lot of issues with the writing but I still recommend it. My favourite parts were the ancient storyline based on real-life characters, Al-Idrisi and King Roger and the map and "planisphere" that Al-Idrisi created for the king. I learned a lot: I had never known that Ceuta existed - a tiny piece of Spain in Morocco! I got really tired of the characters saying profound things to each other all the time but the story as a whole is lovely.

Oh I'm a critical old thing but though I'm enjoying it, there's too much happening in this book. A narrator with synaesthesia AND a love for stones/gems AND the map theme (which by the way hasn't been explained yet at all - how does someone make a living in 2011 by making maps by hand? What are they maps of?). I just think the flowery elements could have been reduced.

I decided I couldn't go one more day without getting my car washed but the time wasted in the queue - I just want to cry! I should be at home, working 😢 A book and a coffee while I wait though.

Thanks for the tag @Klou!

1. Cloud Cuckoo Land (sorry @BarbaraJean I thought I read it last year but it was my first for 2023)
2. A Symphony of Echoes
3. Covenant of Water - Abraham Verghese
4. I have no idea 😂
5. The Starless Sea - Erin Morgenstern - slogging through and not loving it
6....

Oh my word, this is rather funny. It only occurred to me now to search for this book in the database - oddly though, the editor is listed as the author although you can see the name of the actual author on the pic. So I'm translating this.... But I'm having such a hard time with the writing! It's so bad, not sure what she paid the editor for unless she disregarded what they told her.

I wonder how many people have read Dame Agatha's books over the years when life has been too hard to cope with. Taking a break from my cold house to take a highly overheated walk in the bot gardens. That's our winter for you.

This was really a remarkable book and I have a huge author crush on Uzma Aslam Khan right now - the subjects of her writing are unique, her prose is exquisite and she makes you see the world with slightly different eyes. It wasn't an easy read for me emotionally but truly worth it. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

My girls are on holiday with their dad for TWO WEEKS and the evenings are long. I seem to once again be reading something bloody depressing when I'm not in a good state of mind, but I ran out of ACs I felt like rereading so here we are. Maybe I'm getting a little better at reading about suffering. Maybe the characters' suffering makes me grateful I'm not living on a prison island and my life is good even when it's hard.

Good old chauvinistic Agatha Christie 😂

This was a random library choice and I finished it because I'm stubborn, but it had its faults: too long, I couldn't stand the one main character and her shitty choices, and when a writer gets basic facts completely wrong, like thinking that human babies are born blind (🤯), that really pisses me off. I'm completely anti GMO. so that part was fine and done okay, just quite dated by now.

Oh gosh, this is so depressing.
https://theconversation.com/beatrix-potters-famous-tales-are-rooted-in-stories-t...

Oh, so hideously old and beyond all hope of attractiveness!

Looking for something to read while my children play by (in) the ponds in the Botanical Gardens. What the fuck is going on with Scribd? Books I just saved and was literally saving for another day have disappeared, audio books the children want to listen to are forever only available at the end of the month, but then in some cases also leaving Scribd soon. It used to be a lifeline of reading material and now there's nothing.

This book was wonderful, unique, beautiful, terrible. It certainly didn't turn out remotely as I imagined it would. The writing is masterful. Highly recommended for anyone interested in Islam, Pakistan/Kazakhstan/Uzbekistan etc or just for the beauty and something completely different.

It had been quite a while since I last read an Anne Tyler and I really enjoyed this one. Some parts depressed me, feeling triggered by my fears over how my children will look back on their childhood, but I loved the way the character developed and found her place later in life. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

This book found me in the library and it really was beautifully written. It was an ironic read in that I don't do well with descriptions of pain and torture - my word, it makes a Khaled Hosseini novel look like walk in the park. Other than most of the novels set in Afghanistan that I've read, this goes much more sweepingly into the last few decades in Afghanistan, all the espionage around the time of the Soviet occupation, all very interesting.

I'd never heard of the author and can't remember now how I stumbled on the book. But it was beautiful! Here and there a character or a description was a bit overdone for me but mostly I loved the gorgeous tumble of words, disregard for grammar in places, beautiful, sumptuous writing. The afterword by her daughter on the hard work that went into finishing the novel after her mother's stroke was extremely moving. Highly recommended read ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I usually love Bill Bryson but I'm not so sure about this one. So far he has shown a complete lack of familiarity with the translation industry and machine translation. I'm 99.9% certain his 12 dense, unintelligible pages about Italy were MT. And this is total gibberish - the name is Xhosa, I wouldn't say anyone belongs to the Xhosa tribe (Xhosa people, rather) and I'm asking my one colleague if that word is right. Not super impressed.

This is not an light read but I still loved it. I had never known about the situation in Kashmir or about the incredible atrocities committed by Hindu nationalists. I had to skip one passage entirely as I can't cope with torture. But there was also so much else woven into this book, so much beauty and love. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Someone sent me a video of an interview with Gabor Maté and although I still want to read his book on trauma turning into physical illness in the body, this book on Scribd caught my eye as the interview focused on psychedelics. I've always been incredibly judgemental about any kind of drugs and now this book is blowing my mind. It's not a quick read but absolutely fascinating so far.

I was in a bit of a reading slump and selected this from among the free books on the kindle. He had an incredible experience and the most amazing luck, but a lot of the book in unbelievably sad. I feel so sad thinking of everyone who has died trying to get to Europe, everyone who has gotten stuck in Libya or Morocco or being homeless and without skills once they reached their destination.

I liked it but I didn't absolutely love it. Especially in the last part of the book, when it switched narrators and then ended with that, I found it a bit disjointed. The content is moving even if the writing isn't always stellar. ⭐⭐⭐

⭐⭐⭐⭐ As other Littens have commented, the connection with Margaret Mead makes it fascinating and makes me want to read some of her books. The writing is beautiful and excellent and I'm a sucker for a relatable love story. The 1930s attitudes to the people they lived with didn't bother me, because it WAS the 1930s. Recommended!

So far I'm enjoying this completely random find on Libby. I'm hoping it continues strong!

I never read Peter Pan before or knew the story except for the vaguest ideas. It was the favourite book of the narrator in All my Mothers and I thought I would finally read it today.

Mostly I found it very depressing and quite racist, and the fantasy really strange. Some of the writing is beautiful, I'll give it that. All in all I find it interesting that it became such a classic.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ I think I most enjoyed the child's voice in the beginning of the book, but of course she had to grow up. Pros: I liked the emotional honesty. The setting of Córdoba was beautiful and beautifully done. Cons: I can't help feeling that there was one tragedy too many. I also think that for a book about mothers, it doesn't explore the ways that relationship often looks nothing like this idealisation. A lovely book, despite the caveats, I promise!

I couldn't put this down! At times it absolutely broke my heart but I couldn't stop reading. I love this man's writing. Beautiful, thoughtful, just wonderful. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐