“He was wearing a polo shirt with fat, colored stripes and a white collar which made him look like a formal caterpillar.”
Aims42 Love that description 😂 A++ 1d
Bookwormjillk 🤣😂🤣😂 1d
50 likes2 comments
“He was wearing a polo shirt with fat, colored stripes and a white collar which made him look like a formal caterpillar.”
pickI think Kelly Bishop might be the ultimate chaotic good. She‘s sassy, opinionated, stubborn, motivated by justice, honest about her own faults & failures, optimistic yet realistic, grateful & *never* bitter. What a mindset & what a talent! Her big mouth combined with her dance background made me miss my grandma (a jitterbug champion rather than a classically-trained ballerina) fiercely. It was a pleasure to get to know Emily Gilmore better. 🩰💗🎬
pickReread Unraveling for a traveling book club at my library. I hosted today‘s meeting at the NRT (Natural Resources Trust) Sheep Pasture. It was just as good as when I read it the first time — & the book club attendees agreed! How can you not love a book which begins, “Sheep don‘t look like they‘d be slippery.” It explores the process of making a sweater — from shearing the sheep, to spinning & carding the wool, to dyeing and (finally) knitting.👇🏻
pickA 35-year-old writer moves in with an 85-year-old spitfire, recently widowed, right before the pandemic. He keeps a journal of their experience.
The relationship between Ben & Winnie forms s.l.o.w.l.y. — which makes the end result all the more satisfying. From my lived experience, it reminded me of having a rabbit…that slow build of trust from a creature who is markedly independent & willful in spite of *or because of* her vulnerability.👇🏻
Continuing the trend of occasionally posting non-sequitors so I don‘t get pulled back into other social media (Instagram, Facebook). Thanks for being here!
The non-book-related item of the moment is: I got bangs…which I already regret! 😅 I worried they might not look good, or that I might not be able to style them properly (which remains to be seen). It didn‘t occur to me that they might be plain annoying!
It‘s been raining, raining. 🌧️🌸🍃
pickA 20-something Taiwanese-American suffering from depression finds a sentient blob in an alleyway. Though she‘s experiencing a profound disconnectedness from herself & others, she tries to forge a connection. I liked this book from the get-go. The dark, cynical humor made me laugh. I wanted *more,* though. More character evolution & more character depth from just about everyone. It‘s certainly a book where everyone‘s uncomfortably in the middle.
pickMarra, who is not-quite-a-nun & barely a princess, learns that her eldest sister was killed by her husband, the prince. Her middle sister is now married to the same man, crowned king; she stays pregnant to keep him from beating her — or at least hold him back a bit. Marra vows to save her sister, loosening the political noose around her neck, by killing the monster. She assembles a band of not-so-merry, magical misfits to aid her in her quest.👇🏻
The variety encapsulated by my reading month makes me happy. It‘s a pretty accurate snapshot of my literary life as a whole.
StoryGraph tells me I‘m 14 books ahead of my reading goal. It‘s possible I set the bar too low but it still gives me a flush of pleasure!
“I would like to touch the world
and not harm it. I would like to be touched and not
harmed.”
pickJoy Sullivan strikes me as a poet aiming to be a younger, more sexual Mary Oliver (cf: “Tomatoes” to “Roses” [Felicity]). But Mary was already perfect; fully incarnate yet not inelegantly carnal. I don‘t begrudge Sullivan having had an orgasm or writing about it. I do have reservations about her — metaphorically — beating off a dead horse (an offense which feels particularly egregious coming from a horse girl). 👇🏻
pickFilled with examples of truly beautiful prose (e.g. “If I was allowed, I‘d run my finger across Mama‘s face the way I do with Christmas bulbs to feel their shine”), this novel describes hideously traumatic experiences. There‘s so much needless death, the fact of which the Dakhóta children in each section (set in the 1960s, 1930s, & 1900s) are all too aware.
It‘s heartbreaking, intimate, and historically accurate pain. ??
pickApril‘s selection for my kids‘ fantasy book club at the library. It was my favorite when I was little, so I was eager to see how it would be received by today‘s generation, 30 years later. It dawned a gorgeous, sunny day (after a month full of rain), so I had only one attendee. Lucky for me, Maeve is my (secret) favorite! She LOVED the book, which was validating. If I‘m being honest, much of my taste today can be traced back exactly this far.👇🏻
Did I go back and find the post I made about this dedication 8 years ago? You bet I did! Good thing this wasn‘t that popular of a book (though sad for Katie Cotugno, who is delightful)!
I wasn‘t even that big of a Hanson fan but my childhood bff was — and this made me laugh. Funnily enough, I just saw her today for brunch!
Wild to think I‘ve been on Litsy for over 8 years.
#SundayFunday
WELL.
That was a joyful chore! 😅 I‘ve placed my votes for #CampLitsy25. I chose the titles I thought would lead to the most productive discussions — or, in the case of Sky Daddy, the one(s) I didn‘t want to be alone with. 😜
Thanks for hosting, @BarbaraBB @Megabooks & @squirrelbrain !
*If you‘re interested in viewing the longlist, voting, or in the event itself, visit any of their pages or check out the hashtag!
Jett got to pick out a tomato plant. He‘s very proud. Can‘t wait to pee on it, tbh.
Despite acing AP US History, taught by a very liberal teacher in the heart of Massachusetts — in a former factory town! — I‘m just now learning about the suffragette slogan “Bread for all, & Roses too!” which is inextricably linked to the Lowell Textile Mill Strike.
My soul is consumed; I need the words framed immediately.
Read the linked poem, then the context in the comments below:
https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/bread-and-roses-song/
Another treasure discovered via Katherine May‘s newsletter. Musicians have submitted a petition to have Los Cedros Cloud Forest (which already has legally established personhood) recognized as a co-creator of their song. It features “frogs, birds, the slowed down echolocating frequencies of bats & vibrations from the mycorrhizal networks of a newly discovered fungus.”
https://open.spotify.com/track/3H182DGezvqGcpcUwIALNW?si=-exWOuJtS9-EUGZf55o_Ng
“I want my parents to be in love in both ways, not Dad by himself. So I fall in love for them, over and over again.”
#BibliologistBio
WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE GENRES?
Literary fiction, speculative fiction, nature writing, memoirs, essays, & romance.
WHAT ARE A FEW OF YOUR DESERT-ISLAND READS?
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, and Devotions by Mary Oliver.
WHAT'S YOUR GO-TO READING SNACK?
Coffee and frosted animal crackers or beer and wasabi peas.
Cont‘d 👇🏻
I reactivated MyTBR account & have been daydreaming about being a bibliologist ever since. What would your profile look like if you worked for them? I‘ll share mine in a separate post!
QUESTIONS:
•What are your favorite genres?
•What are a few of your desert island reads?
•What‘s your go-to reading snack?
•Weirdest or most interesting place you‘ve read a book?
•What do you do when you‘re not reading?
#BibliologistBio
pickDalton, a political adviser forced into a rare period of inactivity by the pandemic, finds an injured leveret on the path behind her country home and nurses it back to health. Though she never closes the door to the fields & meadows beyond her threshold, the hare chooses to spend pieces of each day with her. Dalton‘s cottage is viewed as a safe haven — so safe that the hare eventually opts to give birth to her wild babies in the author‘s bedroom.
“The atmosphere of calm suffused by her throughout the house lingers even when she is gone. I hope always to be able to summon it at will, along with the memory of the light and trusting touch of her paws in the palm of my hand, and her steady…gaze. And when one day I can no longer see her, I will watch the hares in the field knowing that her being is woven into theirs, and I only have to look up at night to see her symbol etched in the stars.”
Happy milestone, @dabbe !
My #moodboardcontest vibe is, “Everything‘s a mess but at least the tender buds are blooming.” Easter has always been my favorite but my family is going through a rocky patch right now…as is our country, as is the world. I‘m taking comfort in soft breezes, soft petals, & soft puppies whenever I can. I‘ve also been conducting scientific research re: how long the average 39-year-old woman can stay submerged under coffee.
pickIf I wanted to review this book properly (and follow the author‘s lead), I‘d give each essay a rating out of 5 stars and then calculate the average. My actual method was far less scientific, which is how I roll. I basically just went with my gut.
This was my first John Green book. I say that as a librarian who works in Youth Services, by which I mean I‘m saying it very quietly so as not to be publicly shamed. The good news is that I loved it.👇🏻
pickWow, I cried so much at the resolution. 😅 Get ready for a post-book, post-cry headache (in the best way).
This was an absolute pleasure — one of the best romances I‘ve read in a while — with two small caveats:
1. Reading about anything you have intimate knowledge of is always tricky; it leads to hyper-criticism. After raising a house rabbit for 12 years, I have intimate knowledge of what it takes to be a bun-mom. And Lane had a pet bunny.👇🏻
“That‘s what I wanted, more than anything: a low pressure way to say hey, we‘re cool, how are you. No need to be weird anymore; we‘re too old, and the world is too fragile.”
pick“Pour Some Sugar On (Past, Present, & Future) Me”
It was the summer of 1996. My best friend, Dana, and I had decided to start a band. Never mind that neither of us knew how to play an instrument. Never mind that at least one of us (me) couldn‘t carry a tune. Our name was Azalea and we were going to be HUGE. I knew this because I‘d read what was written in Dana‘s composition notebook. 👇🏻
Recently, I asked for book recommendations. I was/am seeking something on the lighter, funnier side. Approximately a bazillion books came in for me (with lots of side-eye and ribbing from my coworkers). I whittled the stack down to those where the first few pages snagged my attention. This is what I ended up with.
Thanks to those who chimed in!
Fingers crossed. 🤞🏻
pickI fell in immediate & unabashed love with this novel. Batuman‘s clever writing & strange sensibilities made me laugh & read sentences aloud every other page. I even went to her website to learn more about the weird & wonderful person writing. When I saw that she‘d used code to make the words “web design” appear in rainbow font (stating that she‘d learned how in the 90‘s), I felt myself swoon. Then, my feelings became more convoluted & complex.👇🏻
Whoops! Late to post my (nonfic heavy) #ReadingBracket2025.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil will *always* end up on the board whenever she‘s got a book to enter into the fray.
Titles written below (for those of us who struggle with tiny print):
Jan: The Witching Year by Diana Helmuth
Feb: Moominland Midwinter by Tove Jansson
Mar: Bite by Bite by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Wild: Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel 🏆
Wild: Eight Bears by Gloria Dickie
Anyone read any good, contemporary, offbeat, funny fiction lately?
Everything on my shelf seems to be diametrically opposed: weighty, dark, lyrical, and poignant OR a floofy romance. I‘m looking for something more like the titles pictured. Witty, modern, and not *necessarily* sweet (but it‘s okay if there‘s some sweetness, too).
*It should probably be noted that I‘m not a fan of massively unlikeable characters.
Check out my (very red & angry) new tattoo!
It‘s a memorial tribute to Moxie (my pet house rabbit), taken from Brian Wildsmith‘s picture book “The Princess and the Moon.”
My artist (who just happens to be a descendent of Owen Chase, first mate onboard the Essex — the shipwreck that inspired Moby Dick! 🐋) used a process called “bloodlining” to get the color bleed right. Pretty bad-ass, tbh.
She said I sat like a champ. 🏆
On my love/hate relationship with StoryGraph stats:
I almost never categorize the books I read as lighthearted. Yet, it‘s one of the biggest pieces of my moody pie! How? Eg: Unreliable Narrator is tagged as lighthearted. Written by a comedian, it‘s mostly about living with depression. Kind-of the opposite of lighthearted! The point is “things feel so heavy”; then, “how do we go on, anyway?” Finding the light is not the same as BEING lighthearted.
pickAre there sentences I wish Choi had never penned (or at least had edited out)? Yes. Chief among them, “It reorganized her thoughts with such an intensity that she had the sudden urge to pee.” Still, this book is *compulsively* readable. I loved the sci-fi story-within-a-story that Penny crafts for her Creative Writing course. And I‘m a sucker for both misfits *and* an epistolary component (be it letters, emails, or texts)…👇🏻
“By the time I was ten or eleven, everyone had moved on from sticker collecting—everyone, that is, except for me…I particularly loved the fruits…
God, I loved scratch and sniff bananas. They didn‘t smell like bananas; they smelled like the Platonic Ideal of bananas. If real bananas were a note played on a home piano, scratch and sniff bananas were that same note played on a church‘s pipe organ.”
pickI used to try to read aloud to my pet house rabbit and, though she was my little soul-twin in many ways, she was decidedly uninterested; she preferred a cozy silence.
Bite by Bite will go down in personal memory as the first book I read aloud to my pup. He *loved* it. We started with Nezhukumatathil‘s essay on potatoes. Jett is now my “best spud.” 🥔 He also loved the chapter on maple syrup. As such, I‘m unable to rate this book objectively.
My March reads, roughly in order of enjoyment (from least to greatest). The bottom row features all of my favorites.
I keep shocking myself with how many books I‘m managing to read each month. Either this is my new norm, thanks to deleting my social media accounts (and what a confirmation of my choices that would be!) or it‘s going to taper off at some point. With the gradually warming weather, I‘m starting to let myself dream of beach reading…
so-soQuite possibly the most three-star book I‘ve ever read. 😅
Too many small details, which I normally don‘t mind, but it doesn‘t feel like they add anything (e.g. “I dropped the keys into the bowl on the table”; “I slid the bin from the shelf and lowered it to the ground”; “I pulled onto the shoulder…sliding the gear into park”; “I opened the door, getting out of the truck”, “I reached out…I pushed it open…My eyes widened,” etc).👇🏻
pickIn recent years, there‘s no show I‘ve been more obsessed with than “Joe Pera Talks with You.” I‘m mentioning this because I subscribe to Jo Firestone‘s newsletter; she plays Sarah. Sometimes, she lets her friends (and fellow comedians) take over her newsletter for her. One such installment was written by Aparna Nancherla. In it, she mentions her forthcoming book. This one. I can‘t say I recommend the book as much as the show but…it was okay. 👇🏻
pickI can‘t count the amount of people to whom I‘ve enthusiastically gushed about this book!
Wholly compelling & nuanced characters (Niamh, I love you), great writing, a vivid setting, horrifying scorpion snacks, the gleeful destruction of every binary, and Spice Girls references *aplenty.* I‘ve heard the series described as a direct & oppositional response to JK Rowling‘s TERFdom — and yes, it‘s (needfully) that — but it stands on its own, too!👇🏻
I‘m at a lakehouse in upstate NY with two of my high school besties. We‘ve hit up 3 bookstores in 2 days. 🤓 This is my haul from the most recent stop.
It‘s BONKERS windy here! Obscured book title tagged. 🐈⬛
pickIt‘s hard not to compare this to Erica Berry‘s Wolfish (tagged below, which I also enjoyed). Eight Bears is less of a memoir and more just straight-up science journalism and travelogue. It‘s also *far* more organized. Previously, if you‘d asked me how important organization was to me, I would have scoffed. I tend to think of myself (and my taste) as being sort of dreamy, floaty, and tangential. But Gloria Dickie proved me wrong! 👇🏻
pickAnother book down for my kids‘ fantasy book club at the library. I think they‘re going to love this one. Clear sentences, a shorter page length, whimsical illustrations, and some higher thinking about cruelty vs. kindness & how to manage deep emotions (anxiety, loneliness, abandonment, loss) make it an appealing & balanced book.
At the end of each meeting, we always make corner bookmarks. This time, it‘s twirly, leafy Green Man mustaches. 🍃
pickYeah…that was great!
It‘s been a bit since I stayed up past midnight to finish a book but this was worth it. I only want to read about unlikeable characters from now on if it ends like this.
That the author thanks her “beloved sphynx cat, who sadly passed away as [she] was completing this novel”, stating “I would have started a death cult for you,” only makes it better. I know the feeling. R.I.P. Moxie Crimefighter. 🐰 Long live Samantha Allen!
“I had developed a habit of making tea and not drinking it. Small swamp waters multiplied on every hard surface of the apartment.”
pickThe kind of novel which immediately makes you jealous that you‘re not a 30-year-old debut author with a longlisted book being considered for a prestigious award.
Callahan‘s stream-of-consciousness style might not be for everyone. But it is for me — and it lends itself to some brilliant one-liners. My favorite might be, “She said that coincidence was a religion and that she was agnostic.”
The form fits the plot exceedingly well. 👇🏻
Beth Brower, author of The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, on what she looks for in a March read.
I think this might be what I look for *always.*
“I didn‘t think you were that keen for marriage…”
“Yeah, but that was with you,” he said.
“Cheers.”
“No, I mean, the future you decide with a person is different for every person, isn‘t it? It‘s not like you decide what you want, then someone fits into that. We decided we wouldn‘t have gotten married. Lucy and I discussed…that we would…”
“All these things we thought about each other…funny how wrong we were.”
“We weren‘t wrong…we were growing up.”
pickIt‘s a testament to Alderton‘s writing (& my own healing) that I was so immersed in the story, I didn‘t even think to compare it to my formative heartbreak until 3/4 of the way through! Being “ghosted” by someone you care about, when you‘ve been lead to believe that what you have together is valuable, is so damaging to your self-worth. I love that in her novel, Alderton suggests we trust our friends to be keepers of our hope. Just for a while.👇🏻
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