Spooky Halloween reading with my little goblin Polly 🙀

Surprise book mail! I won a sweepstakes and these babies showed up on my doorstep today. Been loving the new movies on Netflix and I'm super excited for some campy reading nostalgia with these!

First trip to Half Price Books since the pandemic! Great haul!

Had my first haircut since the pandemic and went to my local coffee shop to read and enjoy the sun. Long weekend off to a strong start!

My hubs got me the hardback of Plain Bad Heroines for Xmas and omg is it just a freaking gorgeous book. I also have it on audio so I'm trying out reading and listening as well (not simultaneously) but I'm so glad I have this one in hardcopy, the illustrations and footnotes make it such an experience.

Got a new kindle case and I'm in love! 😻🐙

Stoney approves of my next read.

Book buddy.

The only good thing about this cold snap is all the extra kitty cuddles. I am a human heating pad.

Audio knitting to celebrate the Superb Owl.

Holy run-on sentence, Batman!

This book is violent, dark, raw, and powerful. A woman known only as The Witch is found murdered, and a series of narrators lead us in circles around her death. With each we learn more about the realities of poverty, addiction, abuse, and violence against women in the impoverished setting.

The writing style took me a while to adjust to but well worth the effort. #integrateyourshelf

For sure! A few faves (I have backlist to work through on some of these but new works automatically go on the TBR!):
Roxane Gay
Jasmine Guillory
Justina Ireland
Helen Hoang
Cherie Dimaline
Stephen Graham Jones
Tiffany D. Jackson
Samantha Irby
Kiley Reid
Brit Bennett
Carmen Maria Machado

#integrateyourshelf

My brain exploded so many times while I was listening to this. Required reading for being a person. Science researched Miller becomes obsessed with icthyologist David Starr Jordan as she searches for order in her own life. His story and legacy lead her down many poignant turns.

I haven't read this one yet, but since so many #integrateyourshelf participants (including me!) had trouble coming up with a book in translation by an African author I wanted to share this one that just landed on my TBR. It's by a Tunisian author translated from French. @ChasingOm @Emilymdxn

Was lax posting at the end of 2020, but had to share this beautiful novel about a young Cherokee man working at Asheville's Grove Park in one summer during WWII, when the Inn has turned into a detainment center for high ranking prisoners of war and their families. When a young girl goes missing, a fish-out-of-water situation becomes something much more dangerous.

#integrateyourshelf #ownvoices

My first read of the year (about halfway through now) is Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami. It is a novel in translation by a Japanese author. It is a great exploration of women's complicated feelings about their bodies and fertility that I heard about on the wonderful Reading Women podcast.

#integrateyourshelf

1.) Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami
2.) Basketful of Heads by Joe Hill, illustrated by Leomacs--such cool art! Loved ending the year with a badass heroine.
3.) I set my Goodreads at 100 for this year--a little lower than last year but I'm hoping to knock out some honkers this year including 1Q84 for the “longest book on my TBR“ #PopSugarChallenge prompt

#weekendreads

Snuggle reading!

I'm not crying, you're crying.
Indigenous speculative fiction is apparently in my wheelhouse. After climate change and pollution have ravaged the land and a plague has caused many to lose the ability to dream, indigenous people are hunted and harvested for their immunity. Mirroring the way these groups have had to continually adapt and fight for survival throughout the last several hundred years, a moving dystopian tale. #integrateyourshelf

Oh. My. God. At times eerily timely (hospital workers' improvised PPE and N95 rationing, anyone?), the novel follows a pregnant woman named Natalie who has been exposed to a super rabies outbreak. Taking place over a period of just a few hours, the first third felt a little slow and then it took off like a rocket. All caps spoilers in the comments because I have so many feelings after that, and it's gonna be an epic book hangover.

1. Just started When We Were Magic and I'm already in love
2. We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry
3. I'm watching scary movies most of the year! Went to a drive in last weekend and saw A Nightmare on Elm Street for the first time which was awesome!

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain

A wonderful YA novel (and that cover!) Felix is a black, trans boy longing for love, like most 17-year-olds. When he's the target of anti-trans bullying and someone posts old photos of him with his dead name, he's angry and wants revenge. But his plan for payback ultimately leads to exploring his own identity and relationships, and to new revelations in his art. Thoughtful and vibrant! #integrateyourshelf

Culling books for donation. It's hard! Polly is providing emotional support. #catsoflitsy #readerproblems

Horror is my jam and I've been reading quite a few diverse horror books over the summer/early fall so I wanted to pick something I hadn't posted about recently for this week's #integrateyourshelf. This collection by Daniel M Lavery (formerly published as Mallory Ortberg) is a gender bending collection of dark fairytale updates, which fall squarely in my wheelhouse! More recs in the comments ☠

A 1940s "How I Met Your Father" (although the narrator is not the Mother!) as a woman named Vivian recounts her time living at her aunt's theater, cavorting with showgirls, designing costumes and generally burning the candle at both ends. Loved the voice Gilbert achieves for Vivian. She is a hilarious and engaging storyteller!

It's always exciting when the notification for a Libby hold pops up but even more so on Read an Ebook day! @OverDrive #ebooklove

Trethewey is an incredible writer. Here she memorializes her mother, who was murdered by her stepfather after years of abuse. She also recounts her early years being raised by interracial parents in the deep south at a time when their marriage was illegal. This is a very difficult read (I don't know how Trethewey did the audio herself) and at points made me feel physically ill but it is worth the effort.
#integrateyourshelf

#integrateyourshelf Latinx Heritage month is coming up from September 15 to October 15. I feel like this is a very obvious choice but I'm super excited to read Mexican Gothic to celebrate and for Spooky Season! And I'm thrilled that Moreno-Garcia hit the NYT bestseller list for the first time with this book. @ChasingOm @Emilymdxn

Fun #ScienceSeptember prompt for #integrateyourshelf this week! I don't read a ton of science books but I enjoy them when I do. This is one on my TBR that I plan to pick up soon. And this cover just makes me super happy whenever I see it!

@Emilymdxn @ChasingOm

Very cool comic anthology on Kickstarter now: Shelly Bond put together this collection of 150 women and NB artists from around the world to help support comic retailers struggling during the pandemic. It's full of comics, crafts, and cats and I reeaaaalllly want a copy so if this sounds like your wheelhouse please consider backing this project!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sxbond/insider-art?ref=thanks-copy
#integrateyourshelf

I knocked the tagged book and Confessions by Kanae Minato off my TBR this month; both were great and the tagged really resonated with me as someone who feels like an oddball most of the time!

New to my stack:
Disoriental by Negar Djavadi
The Disaster Tourist by Yun Ko-Eun
Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

#integrateyourshelf

A freaking awesome horror novel! This felt like a really fun monster movie at points, and I loved this badass heroine. Joan's husband Victor has been missing for nearly a year when she stumbles on him in a revival tent in the Walmart parking lot - but he says he's a different person, Reverend Eugene Wolff. Childhood stories about a creature called the rogarou suddenly start to feel very real. #integrateyourshelf

I was absolutely in stitches for much of Samantha Irby's latest. She is so hilarious and relatable ("Hello, 911? I have to cancel an appointment.") Hollywood, please realize your giant mistake in passing on a TV show by her and Abbi freaking Jacobson and fix that problem immediately.

“My entire community suffered from a lack of trust: we didn‘t trust society to provide the basics of a good education, safety, access to good jobs, fairness in the justice system. And even as we distrusted the society around us, the culture that cornered us and told us we're perpetually less, we distrusted each other.“
#integrateyourshelf

"Imagine the time and energy I could save if I were not this person."
Girl, I feel seen. And I am laughing so hard I'm crying listening to Samantha Irby talk about periods.

Libro.fm has been reaching into my brain and putting out interviews lately and I thought I'd share the latest since it's a topic we've been discussing in #integrateyourshelf the last few weeks. I have Tsao's novel in my TBR but she is also a translator and discusses her process here: https://blog.libro.fm/translator-interview-tiffany-tsao/

Tough week! Like others, I had a difficult time thinking of African authors I've read who have been translated from a language other than English. The closest I can think of is Leila Slimani, who is Moroccan but now lives in France. I know I read some short fiction by African writers in French when I was in college; I wish I still had that textbook on hand!

Did find a nice article on African women writers - link in comments.

#integrateyourshelf

My new favorite Stephen Graham Jones novel! Four friends break the rules and go into the wrong section of the Blackfeet Reservation to hunt elk. Ten years later it's time for their comeuppance. Jones uses both Native American folklore and slasher tropes to construct a heart pounding horror novel that surprised me at every turn, and this book sticks the landing 💯 which is not always the case for horror!

#integrateyourshelf
#summerscares

Finally starting this one! I love the writing already! I thought I'd get some reading time while Stoney got his stitches out at the vet this morning, but they came and picked him up from the car, I started to make this post, and I heard him screaming as they carried him back before I was done writing it 😹 so now I'm home to read on the couch instead!

Super twisted! On the last day of term, a teacher sits her class down and tells them that two of them murdered her young daughter, and she's come up with her own revenge. Told in several sections, each written as if the speaker is addressing you directly, this dark thriller follows the aftermath of one confession and leads to many more.

A great thriller for #womenintranslationmonth

#integrateyourshelf

I really enjoy Yoko Ogawa's work; her novel The Memory Police came out in English last year and has gotten a lot of buzz/award nominations, and I loved her short story collection (tagged). I love dark/weird fiction!

I'm also currently reading Confessions by Kanae Minato; this thriller has been on my TBR for ages. Liking the style very much!

A few other authors I've enjoyed:
Han Kang (The Vegetarian)
Hye-Young Pyun (The Hole)
#integrateyourshelf

Gobbled this one up in under 24 hours! An awesome thriller loosely inspired by the Gypsy Rose Blanchard case - Rose Gold Watts was poisoned by her mom Patty for her entire childhood, believing she had a chronic illness. Her testimony put Patty away. Now after five years in prison Patty is being released, and Rose Gold is welcoming her home. I thought the twists and turns were great, exciting without getting stupid like thrillers sometimes do.

Kind of a millennial Office Space, work BFFs Margo (a black female engineer) and Lucas (an Asian man who works customer service instead of tech at their startup) steal user data out of frustration and instantly regret it. A few months later Margo is killed in a car accident and Lucas is left to sort through her online footprint and his grief. Loved this debut!

#integrateyourshelf

Jumping in and out of #deweysreadathon today so I hopped over to my local coffee shop for a #readingsnack this morning. Got in a chapter of Wow, No Thank You on audio during the drive and now settling in with the tagged book, which I am loving!

An awesome steampunk adventure with two great narrators! Love the world Priest established; Seattle has become a biohazard zone after Leviticus Blue drov his Boneshaker drill under the city, releasing the "blight," a gas that turns people into shambling monsters. When Briar Wilkes' son goes under the city wall to find answers, she has to go after him and see for herself what the city's become after 15 years.

Over five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five men she was close to, including her brother. She weaves their stories with her memories of growing up in Mississippi, exploring the ways that poverty and institutional racism contributed to their deaths. This was a tough read but so worth it. #integrateyourshelf

Hanging out with my recovering cone head and doing some reading over lunch. Glad I can spend extra time with him while I'm working from home #catsoflitsy

Not sure I've as many translated works from the Americas as other parts of the world but one of my fave authors, translated or otherwise, is Argentine author Samantha Schweblin. She's an auto-read for me; I loved her latest Little Eyes and found it absolutely haunting. The tagged book is a wild ride; I started reading it in bed one night and stayed up for hours reading it in one sitting. Her work is dark and fascinating.

#integrateyourshelf

#integrateyourshelf participants: for any podcast listeners, Reading Women has an interview with Alice Wong this week about her essay collection on disability. One of the hosts of this show has a chronic illness so this is a topic they've explored in the past. This podcast has a huge emphasis on diversity and #ownvoices and their challenge has helped me expand my reading a lot! https://www.readingwomenpodcast.com/blog/interview-with-alice-wong

Tried to go with #ownvoices recs for this topic, a mix of memoir and fiction:
Tagged and Meaty by Samantha Irby
The Collected Schizophrenias by Esme Weijun Wang
Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert
Experimental Film by Gemma Files
The Kiss Quotient & The Bride Test by Helen Hoang
Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
Love, Loss, and What We Ate by Padma Lakshmi

#integrateyourshelf