This is my #vibeboard for #naughtylistholidayswap #nlhs
I love Charles Dickens because of A Christmas Carol, from which I learned his mastery of words, characters, and humor. I love that he loved cats. And I love that my grandmother collected The Old Curiosity Shop dishes back in the 1940s, so I can use them at Christmas time.
As charming as they are, however, I do not like the Muppets Christmas Carol. So that‘s a big NO.
My next audiobook for #Algeria #foodandlit @Catsandbooks
so-soAn extraordinarily unsympathetic main character floats through life being thoughtless and too blunt with people. He attends his mother‘s funeral with nonchalance—really, we‘re all just going to die anyway, so what‘s the big deal? Then a suspicious character befriends him, he enters a serious (at least to the extent he‘s capable) relationship, and murders a man (not a spoiler—it‘s in the first sentence of the book‘s description). The MC lives a ⬇️
#wordoftheday. I ♥️ your sample sentences Mom! @Doll8455
“I inclined to think that they were greeting me, after their fashion, but it had a queer effect, seeing all those old fellows grouped round the keeper, solemnly eying me and dandling their heads from side to side.”
#Algiers #foodandlit @Catsandbooks
bailedThe premise is so interesting. But instead it‘s just listening to the main character living in his own head. Very boring. Fortunately I don‘t need it for #letterZ for #litsyatoz nor for #Algeria #foodandlit as I‘ve got both challenges done! Yay, guilt-free (somewhat) bailing!
Nominations are open now until November 30. We hope to include countries from these 12 regions. Feel free to nominate by commenting to this post your country picks, or nominate a country for each region. Preference will be given to countries not previously chosen, but depending on demand we may duplicate past countries. Countries will be vetted for availability of a range of books, food, and ingredients. Tag me if you post other than to comments.
“He was turning like a teetotum, looking in all directions, and sometimes peering into the darkness of the hall with his little bloodshot eyes. Then he'd mutter something to himself and start gazing up and down the street again.”
#wordoftheday
#Algeria #foodandlit @Catsandbooks
#litsyAtoZ #foodandlit
I got my match today and I‘m so excited!!! Thanks for hosting! #naughtylistholidayswap @WildAlaskaBibliophile @TieDyeDude
pickNot for the faint of heart! The author was a French sympathizer with the native Algerians during the war of independence. As an outspoken journalist, he was a wanted man. When he was arrested his torture began immediately. He committed every detail to memory, knowing most people try to forget the torture. He wrote this book while still imprisoned and snuck it out of his prison page by page. Banned by France, it reached an immense amount of ⬇️
#wordoftheday
“Anyhow, after some palavering among the bench, the Prosecutor, and my counsel, the presiding judge announced that the court would now rise; there was an adjournment till the afternoon, when evidence would be taken.”
#Algeria #foodandlit @Catsandbooks
I‘m on my fifth book for #Algeria #foodandlit and only now
is food mentioned! And most certainly not in an appetizing way. I‘m suspecting food is not much to write about for Algeria.
@Catsandbooks
My next audiobook for #Algeria #foodandlit @Catsandbooks
Also #letterZ for #litsyAtoZ
Book coincidences again! Both books I‘m reading today have prison visits! Not weird for the tagged book, which is short and about murder. But weird because the other prison visit showed up today in my Dickens chunkster. How did they both land on the same day?
From Dickens:
“The man contented himself by briefly replying 'Wisitors;' and taking him by the arm in exactly the same manner as the constable had done the day before, led him, through ⬇️
I had such a great weekend at my friend‘s craft retreat making cards for #naturewintercardswap!! This was Sunday afternoon and most everyone was gone. But I was still going strong. I‘ve a lot more to do on them. I made a special design I hope you all like! 🥰 @TheBookHippie
#wordoftheday
“And then the Arab drew his knife and held it up toward me, athwart the sunlight.”
#Algeria #foodandlit @Catsandbooks
A new mini story:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DRIGp5Pj32I/?igsh=b3ZqOGhkbXNldzly
#wordoftheday #whattheDickens @Cuilin
The definition sort of begs the question doesn‘t it?
“Then, Mr Brass left off writing entirely, and, with his pen in his hand, hummed his very loudest; shaking his head meanwhile from side to side, like a man whose whole soul was in the music, and smiling in a manner quite seraphic.”
Speaking on behalf of lawyers, to some extent this is true!
#whattheDickens @Cuilin
#wordoftheday #algeria #foodandlit @Catsandbooks
“These very torturers, secure under the umbrella of amnesty, did not hesitate to file defamation lawsuits against journalists and witnesses who dared to remind the public of their sanguinary and barbarous exploits. The best known of these vile and vicious individuals were feted as heroes, promoted in rank, and decorated with the highest military and civilian honors.”
Book coincidences are crazy! I read this word for the first time this week in Joan Didion‘s Democracy (above). Now, it‘s in Dickens!! What the heck!
“Quilp said not a word in reply, but walking so close to Kit as to bring his eyes within two or three inches of his face, looked fixedly at him, retreated a little distance without averting his gaze, approached again, again withdrew, and so on for half-a-dozen times, like a head in a phantasmagoria.”
“[Quilp] clung tight to his opponent, and bit and hammered away with such good-will and heartiness, that it was at least a couple of minutes before he was dislodged. Then, and not until then, Daniel Quilp found himself, all flushed and dishevelled, in the middle of the street, with Mr Richard Swiveller performing a kind of dance round him and requiring to know 'whether he wanted any more?'”
#whattheDickens @Cuilin
“The Pilgrimage begins.” Grandfather and Little Nell. #whattheDickens @Cuilin
I‘m well past this point in the book but want to catch up with the illustrations.
Quill‘s attorney Sampson Brass has a primate appearance here!
“Mr Brass, after writhing about, in a great many strange attitudes, and often twisting his face and eyes into an expression like that which is usually produced by eating gooseberries very early in the season, was by this time awake also. Seeing that Mr Quilp invested himself in his every-day garments, he hastened to do the like,…
pickThe narrator is also the author of this unusual fictional story, being portrayed as a true nonfiction biography of the wife, Inez Victor, of a senator. She (assuming the narrator is a she) tells the story according to the events she learns her information about Inez. As a result it is told out of chronological order, but in “real time” as the narrator interviews Inez and many others and reads news articles and documents, etc. In other words, ⬇️
“looking at these two indissoluble partnerships, the coloniser and the colonised, the executioner and his victim, we can see that the second is only an aspect of the first. And without any doubt the executioners are not the colonisers, nor are the colonisers the executioners. These latter are frequently young men from France who have lived twenty years of their life without ever having troubled themselves about the Algerian problem. ⬇️
pickZeal is much like the book I read at the same time last month, This Strange Eventful History, set in Algeria mostly after its war for independence, but in Zeal set in the US just after the Civil War. Both follow generations of families and are character-driven, not plot. Zeal begins with two former in-love slaves looking for each other in the chaotic immediate aftermath of emancipation in the south. This was exceptionally well described: ⬇️
Nominations are open now until November 30. We hope to include countries from these 12 regions. Feel free to nominate by commenting to this post your country picks, or nominate a country for each region. Preference will be given to countries not previously chosen, but depending on demand we may duplicate past countries. Countries will be vetted for availability of a range of books, food, and ingredients. Tag me if you post other than to comments.
My next book for #foodandlit #Algiera @Catsandbooks
Also my #letterQ for #litsyatoz
#wordoftheday
“This seems astonishing now, but we forget how confused and febrile those few weeks in 1975 actually were, the “reassessments” and the “calculated gambles” and the infusions of supplemental aid giving way even as they were reported to the lurid phantasmagoria of air lifts and marines on the roof and stranded personnel and tarmacs littered with shoes and broken toys.”
#authoramonth @Soubhiville Joan just keeps on giving.
Nominations are open now until November 30. We hope to include countries from these 12 regions. Feel free to nominate by commenting to this post your country picks, or nominate a country for each region. Preference will be given to countries not previously chosen, but depending on demand we may duplicate past countries. Countries will be vetted for availability of a range of books, food, and ingredients. Tag me if you post other than to comments.
so-soAdmittedly this book was written at a sorrowful stressful time in the author‘s life, his wife having just told him she‘s divorcing him. So he‘s very sulky as he travels across Oceania in his portable kayak that he carries with him as he flies from place to place. But that doesn‘t excuse his utter lack of humility, and a serious superiority complex with his smug judgments about 90% of his encounters with folks. He starts by blasting New Zealand ⬇️
pickFrench, but not quite French enough, the Cassar family felt most at home in #Algeria. The Cassars have moved to Algeria as WWII is ramping up and Germany has invaded France. What was Algeria to do? Where did it stand? Rather than following events, this book moves chronologically forward but is told by different members of the family during either personal or world events that affect that particular family member. So we aren‘t told what happened ⬇️
A new #wordoftheday
“Intermission at the ballet, one of those third-string touring companies that afford the women and children and dutiful providers of small cities an annual look at … “Nutcracker”; an occasion, a benefit, a reason to dress up after the general fretfulness of the season and the specific lassitude of the holiday and stand outside beneath an improvised canopy drinking champagne from paper cups.”
#authoramonth @Soubhiville
I‘ve reached the “holidays” in the book. I‘m not sure if that means winter holidays but it‘s a good excuse to post another image from another dish from my grandmother‘s Old Curiosity Shop dishes.
Reading how popular this serialization of this book back in the day, I now understand why these dishes were made. Even the book description calls it the Harry Potter of its day.
#whattheDickens @Cuilin
⬇️
This book has taken a very very dark turn. Oh my heart hurts for Little Nell!!! I wouldn‘t have thought Dickens could go to such heartbreaking places. And I‘ve read enough Dickens to see an immense range of emotions. But dang, this is brutal. (I removed spoilers and replaced with ellipses.)
We definitely needed a bit of humor from Mrs Jarley deciding not to become an atheist.
#whattheDickens @Cuilin
But this is what she does instead:
“But instead of adopting this course of retaliation, Mrs Jarley, on second thoughts, brought out the suspicious bottle, and ordering glasses to be set forth upon her favourite drum, and sinking into a chair behind it, called her satellites about her, and to them several times recounted, word for word, the affronts she had received.”
😂😂😂
#whattheDickens @Cuilin
Before we open up nominations, your #foodandlit team has a few announcements. @Butterfinger (our founder and who I met in person this summer and we had a blast!) will start cohosting again this year! We will miss our very valued team member @Catsandbooks who was instrumental in helping us keep it going through the years. And her artwork has been phenomenal. And we have a new artist! Welcome @Kelly_the_Bookish_Sidekick to our team!
#foodandlit country nominations for 2026 will be opening soon! Keep an eye out for announcements!
Want to be tagged? Let me know below in the comments or tag me!
@Butterfinger @LitsyEvents
Women: imagine needing to supply a husband‘s information or worse needing his permission for such things!!
#authoramonth @Soubhiville
#wordoftheday
“Her attention was entirely fixed on the man who sat across the table, a stranger, considerably older than we were and notably uncomfortable in the rather louche camaraderie of the studio.”
#authoramonth @Soubhiville
