pick⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
An easy read that encourages a life lived to the fullest at the limited time it is granted to have. Facing your limited self can be freeing.
7 likes2 stack adds
pick⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
An easy read that encourages a life lived to the fullest at the limited time it is granted to have. Facing your limited self can be freeing.
Finally recovered enough to get back to reading again. First, must finish these #netgalley picks.
pick★★★★
Juxtapose of reality and ideals, this book explores the life inside each characters, always balancing between living with what is expected and living with what is uncertain.
It turned out to be a good read when examined under the lens of race, power, and consequences. There's so much love too, but it wasn't what had me turning the page.
All her life, she had learned that passion, like fire, was a dangerous thing. It so easily went out of control. It scaled walls and jumped over trenches. Sparks leapt like fleas and spread as rapidly; a breeze could carry embers for miles.
- Chapter 11
Everything, she noticed, seemed capable of transmogrification. Even the two boulders in the backyard sometimes turned to silver in the early morning sunlight. In the books she read, every stream might be a river god, every tree a dryad in disguise, every old woman a powerful fairy, every pebble an enchanted soul. Anything had the potential to transform, and this, to her, seemed the true meaning of art.
- Chapter 13
On chapter 13
Jealous of Mia's passion for photography... I've only had such attitude towards books—nothing I regret—and writing, but I wish I was drawn towards other creative pursuits at that early age.
The use of “they“ is sometimes throwing me off that I have to reread the paragraph again, but so far, the writing is familiar even though it is my first Yoon Ha Lee book.
Now here was this Mia, a completely different kind of woman leading a completely different life, who seemed to make her own rules with no apologies.
“Well, I‘d love to buy one,” Mrs. Richardson said. “In fact, I insist. If we don‘t support our artists, how can they create great work?”
“That‘s very generous of you.” Mia‘s eyes slid toward the window briefly, and Mrs. Richardson felt a twinge of irritation at this lukewarm response to her philanthropy.
“Being allowed to do something and knowing how to do it are not the same thing.”
Rewrite a famous story from a different perspective. For example, retell The Wizard of Oz from the point of view of the Wicked Witch.‘
“Don‘t let the shallowness fool you,” Moody had told Pearl. “You know why she watches TV all afternoon? Because she can finish her homework in half an hour before bed. Like that.”
The world has had little Charles pretty much by the balls of late, and there isn‘t much writer left, Whit. So hearing from you was damned lovely.
- “[To Whit Burnett] April 27, 1947“
Work! When her mother said it, it reeked of drudgery: waiting tables, washing dishes, cleaning floors. But for the Richardsons, it seemed noble: they did important things.
Picking this up, even though I have a lot of books opened already. 😅 I really need a nonfiction.
pick★★★★★
An evaluation on and of essays—form, purpose, and impact—that is enriching as that last beautiful poem one had a short encounter but remembers forever. Dillon also writes of his struggles and how reading and writing are ways to cope even when, at times, both are at the roots of the struggles.
Worth a reread for when one wanders.
‘Word of honour – no crossed fingers?‘ Meggie looked him straight in the eye. She could always tell when Mo was lying, however hard he tried to hide it from her.
Stacks of books were piled high all over the house – not just arranged in neat rows on bookshelves, the way other people kept them, oh no! The books in Mo and Meggie‘s house were stacked under tables, on chairs, in the corners of the rooms. There were books in the kitchen and books in the lavatory. Books on the TV set and in the wardrobe, small piles of books, tall piles of books, books thick and thin, books old and new.
Another #TBR for this month
😲 It's already July on my side of the world...
Looks like the fiction pile is heavier than my non-fiction pile this month ⚖️📖
Tomorrow's the day! Starting this with some buddies over at #booksandteabc discord. One chapter a day for me since I have other books I'm reading.
pick★★★★★
A lovely collection. Considering the collection title symbolically—a man falling from a place of untouchable height and dominating visibility, there's this tension that rises up in every story as it focuses on women, their status and their relationship with what surrounds them. I love how each story began and how each took me to an evocative end.
“Five hundred thousand dollars, baby. That‘s my girl.”
- “Windfalls“
...the literature of depression, disarray and the decay of ambition.
- “On melancholy“
Protestations of debilitating sloth are common among writers, and more frequent among prolific ones; Boswell and Johnson, for example, had many sympathetic chats about their shared reluctance to get out of bed and down to work.
- “On melancholy“
To bail or not? 😖🙈
🤩 Excited for this! Didn't know there'll be an extension of this world. I've read The Goblin Emperor years ago.
Pushed to say what I value, what I love, in essays and essayists, I sometimes think it is nothing but style.
[...]
What exactly do I mean, even, by ‘style‘? [...] As much in a person, in a body, as in prose: those people who can keep it together. ‘I like your style‘ means: I admire, dear human, what you have clawed back from sickness and pain and madness. I‘m a fan, too much a fan, of your rising above.
- “On Style“
I listened with every atom and she animated the story with everything she had.
- “War Stories“
“If you can‘t please the gods, trick them.”
- “Glory“
This is already my third attempt to continue this. I'm not certain why I'm experiencing some friction but the storytelling really isn't drawing me in. 🤷🏽
What is “work“?
Me: something you are hired to do
Book:
• You may or may not be getting paid for it, but this is the stuff you “do.”
• When using the term “work,” we mean the broadest definition—not just what you do to make money or for “a job.” Work is often the largest single component of most people‘s waking lives, and over a lifetime it occupies more of our attention and energy than anything else we do.
pick★★★★
On race & privilege, on parenting & fertility, on writing & purpose, on lockdown & livelihood—it's a joy to have found a book that resonates the feelings & ideas that sparked, flickered, & ignited during a panic-stricken year. It may not be the best book that readers hoped it to be—one that opines & acts on every silent struggle—but it is one resounding voice, evidently lacking in relatable courses of action.
Joining #booksandteabc happening on twitter & discord.
For 📖 Small Stories, I'm already reading a collection: What It Means When A Man Falls From the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah.
Check:
• https://mobile.twitter.com/booksandteabc
• https://northernplunder.com/2021-reading-challenge-books-and-tea/
Girls with fire in their bellies will be forced to drink from a well of correction till the flames die out.
- “Redemption“
Writing for me is the serial production of fragments that could be composed in a day or two. I would never have written anything if I had not hit upon this rhythm of invention and completion; it‘s what allows me, and perhaps many other writers too, to keep a killing anxiety at bay.
- “On anxiety“
Imagine a type of writing so hard to define its very name should be something like: an effort, an attempt, a trial. Surmise or hazard, followed likely by failure.
- “On essays and essayists“
#reading
And hello, Litsy! 👋🏽
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