#WeeklyFavorites

This week‘s favorite marks the end of John Boynes excellent Elements series. If you haven‘t read them, I can highly recommend them. All four books are soooo good!

Starting my first #CampLitsy25 read at the beach in San Sebastian (Spain). Nothing more to wish for!

Oh I loved it. The perfect ending of the Elements series. Maybe not that traumatic but at least as moving. This is the story of Aaron who travels either his 14 years old son from Australia to the small Irish island where it all started. What a read 💝

📸: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain (love my job ❤️)

I know myself, with #CampLitsy25 on its way and probably #CampToB25 (why hasn‘t it been announced yet?!) and the upcoming #Booker longlist I know I‘ll keep changing my reading plans. So to make it doable I chose the shortest books on my TBR shelves for #14Books14Weeks. Looking forward to reading all of these!

The story follows a young woman in 1980s Melbourne who is researching Virginia Woolf while trying to live out her feminist ideals. As she navigates relationships, academic life, and her own contradictions, the novel explores the gap between theory and real life. It‘s thoughtful, sharp book, told in a creative, unusual style.

I listened to the audiobook about nine people, all receiving a letter with nine names on it, including their own. They don‘t know each other but one after the other gets killed. Inspired by Agatha Christie‘s And Then There Were None this is a quick read and although I think you couldn‘t guess the outcome it is was entertaining enough! A light pick.

#Roll100

Another cool read by Claudia Piñeiro! This one is about feminism, flies and fumigation and I loved it even though I figured out the twist early one. I loved the characters and their dialogues. The plot is great and a real pageturner. I absolutely continue reading Piñeiro‘s backlist now!

Thanks for sending me this one Trish, you were right that I would love it ?

#FictionalTraveler #SpanishSpeaking ??

We do have our six winners for #CampLitsy25! We‘ll discuss half a book each weekend in June, July and August. Details will follow. For now Meg, Helen and I hope you are as happy with the winning books and look as much forward to go camping as we do!

If you want to be tagged or removed from the taglist, let us know!

I am adding the final two winners to the #CampLitsy25 reads. We‘ll be reading Tilt and King of Ashes in August. We are super excited about this mix of books and we hope you are too! I‘ll post an overview of all six books next so you know what books you might want to get a hold of!
Just a few weeks to get ready for 🏕️ !

#WeeklyForecast 20/25

An exciting reading week ahead! I just started Time of the Flies, which drew me in immediately. Next will be the tagged, which I can‘t wait to read either. I hope to start Theory & Practice as well, recommended by @sarahbarnes , and if there‘s time left I might even start Audition, out first #CampLitsy25 read (not on photo).

Just after @Graywacke ‘s review that should encourage me to continue, I do bail on this one. It reads like a fever dream, these memoirs of a Surinam-Dutch woman but I can‘t make head nor tail of it. #bookerinternational

This is a hard book to read, especially considering what‘s happening now in Israel and Gaza and that it was written in 2014.
It‘s so complicated, Arabs and Jews living in and fighting for the land they feel it‘s theirs. What if all Palestinians vanished from Israel one day?
Ibtisam Azem tries to write from various pov‘s and that just shows how complicated it all is.
A poignant #InternationalBooker book.

A new Mieko Kawakami. I was super impressed by all her books I read so far but this one is a bit disappointing. A girl tries to earn her living in the Tokyo nightlife. That is interesting but 500 pages later I wasn‘t much the wiser. Not sure. Maybe it‘s the translation 🤷🏻‍♀️

For the past few days I‘ve been listening to this book but audio is clearly not the way to go here: the various Scottish dialects are very hard for me to understand and I am not that patient.
Maybe I‘ll try it in print one day because I loved The Echoes but for now it couldn‘t hold my attention.

📸 Porto, Portugal

The narrator is still living in her alternate reality of a daily returning November 18. How to spend the time when you‘re caught in that one day again and again?
It‘s a concept that I found fascinating and the author writes so well. The ending felt a bit hurried but makes me eager to read the third part!

📸 Porto, Portugal

#WeeklyForecast 19/25

I am reading the second volume of On the Calculation of Volume. Such an interesting story.
Next will be the new Mieko Kawakami (in Dutch, it isn‘t translated in English yet) and last but not least I‘ll continue my #InternationalBooker journey with The Book of Disappearance.

These series is getting better by the book. DCI Matilda has to deal with a group of under aged murderers, detained in Starling House, a rather unusual detention center, where one of them is murdered. As always her private life catches up with her too, and then there‘s one of the young killers who she feels needs help.
A great palette cleanser with a nice cliffhanger. I‘ll make sure to get a copy of the 4th installment.

📸 Porto, Portugal

Four months of #ISpy2025 with lots of my TBR books and a lot less actually read!
Looking forward to placing more ✅ and adding more books to the prompts and the grid @TheAromaofBooks made for us 💚

#WeeklyFavorite

Adding the final book to April‘s graphic and it was this month‘s best book as well!

After a series of terrorist attacks by Vietnamese Americans, the government sets up I#detention camps across the US for all Vietnamese Americans. The story is about life inside one of the camps and about life going on outside.

I loved the premise of this novel and I loved the writing and the first half but the book was a bit too long for me in the end and less interesting. Still a pick though.

#AprilStats

4.5⭐️
Small Boat
4.25⭐️
In Memoriam
4⭐️
Somewhere Else
Model Home
Small Rain
3.75⭐️
The Jigsaw man
On the Calculation of Volume I
Under the Eye of the Big Bird
Moon Road
The In-Between
Where the Forest Meets the River
The Mangan Inheritance
3.5⭐️
Outside Looking In
De krater (Dutch)
3.25⭐️
In het oog (Dutch)
Reservoir Bitches
3⭐️
The Unworthy
2.5⭐️
Before I Let Go

Romance, steamy sex; chicklit I‘d have loved in my teens but nowadays not really.

#ReadTheWorld2025

In March and April I‘ve read 7 books set in or written by author from places around the world: #Italy #Switzerland #Iraq #France #Iran #Denmark #Mexico #Argentina

I have the #InternationalBooker to thank for most of these books!

Okay, one more. Another gem of a quote and so true.

This book…. 😱

This #InternationalBooker novel is based on a real case where a dinghy overfilled with migrants attempts to cross the Channel and starts sinking.

Most of the book consists of thoughts by a coastguard radio operator, who‘s being interrogated by the police because of her alleged complicity in the death of 27 migrants. We are drawn into her conflicted consciousness, displaying what appears to be an almost inhumane coldness and indifference. ⬇️⬇️

I bought this because I enjoyed another one by him that we read with the #NYRB group a few years ago. Now I finally picked it up and I wasn‘t disappointed. It‘s dark and a bit gothic and very Irish (I think). Jamie Mangan is traveling to Ireland to delve into his past and to learn is he‘s a descendant of a famous 19th century Irish poet. His journey takes him to a small village with lots of remarkable people.

#WeeklyForecast 18/25

I am in the middle of The Mangan Inheritance which I am loving. Next will be the tagged title for the #InternationalBooker and I also want to read My Documents, that @TrishB nominated for #CampLitsy25 and caught my eye in the bookshop the day after!

I recently decided to stop reading dystopian novels for a while and yet I read this. I should have stuck to my decision. One can only deal with so much post apocalypse in this crazy world. So it is partly me but then again, the story is definitely not as good as Tender in the Flesh, the reason why I picked it up.
It‘s at least as gory in its details but that‘s about it. Too bad 🤷🏻‍♀️

This is the follow-up to The Road to Dalton that we read in the #EuropaCollective reading group on Litsy.

This second installment is just as good and it‘s a pleasure to spend some more time with the inhabitants of Dalton, Maine. Five years after Bridget‘s death, her absence is still palpable in the community.

I am looking forward to what will happen next with some of the characters.

This is my #Roll100 read!

#WeeklyForecast 17/25

Back home after spending Easter at the coast. My plans are to finish Where the Forest Meets the River and the tagged book. If possible I‘d like to make a start in a #NYRB classic: The Mangan Inheritance.

The narrator is hospitalized with a rare vascular condition. For days he‘s at ICU, not really knowing what‘s happening, though he knows it‘s serious.
Each medical detail is described, as is the narrator‘s view on life, his past and future.
And it‘s 2020 and COVID is everywhere. In the hospital, in people‘s attitude, in the protests in the streets. It took me back to those days and although it frightened me I loved this about the book. Very good!

Wow this was a very touching book about the boys (so young) who went to war in 1914. Those stories about the trenches always are so devastating. 60,000 men dying in the Somme offensive… in just one day. This book covers it all - and the lovestory between two elite boarding school boys, so English. A great read.

Two middle-aged (I hate that expression) men fall in love on a date. This book is about their growing closer, each with a life and a big love behind him. It‘s a very tender book despite all graphic descriptions of smells - the author must be an expert on bodily smells 😉. Thanks for sending me this Carolyn, you were right that I‘d like it!

#FictionalTraveler #Island 🇦🇺

The book I read is not in the database but it is by the same author. It‘s a Dutch novella, one you received for free when buying books during our yearly national Dutch books promotion week.
I collect them and they are mostly decent. This one is good too, about a brother and a sister, taking their kid brother, who seems depressed and is obsessed by astronomy, to visit a place in Germany, once hit by a meteorite.

Almost twenty years ago Kathleen and Yannick have lost their daughter Una. She went missing on the other side of Canada. Their marriage stranded and they haven‘t seen each other for years. Now there‘s a body found and together they drive all across the country, covering kilometers and time lost forever.

The characters, their grief, the roadtrip: it‘s all done so well. Recommended.

📷 Knokke, Belgium

#WeeklyForecast 16/25

I don‘t want to get too crazy yet about all CampLitsy nominations that are calling my name, and stick to my plan! I‘ll read the tagged one, by a favorite author, gifted to me by the wonderful @CarolynM . Where the Forest Meets the River is my #Roll100 book and Small Rain is the last one I wanted to read from the #ToB25 longlist.

But first I have to finish Moon Road that‘s not in the photo but that I am reading now.

I‘ve seen so many books already that I‘d love to read at #CampLitsy25! Adding some more, here are my nominations (tags below)!

“Every 2 hours and 25 minutes, a woman in #Mexico is strangled, raped, dismembered, burned alive, mutilated, beaten to pulp, and left with bruises and broken bones.”

Combine these gruesome facts on femicide with living the high life of drugs, money, cosmetic surgery and Instagram followers and you probably have the span of Mexican society and of this #InternationalBooker collection of short stories. A good one.

#ReadingTheWorld2025

Thank you #ToB25Longlist and @Megabooks for bringing this book to my attention.
It‘s a dark, unsettling story of childhood trauma in a haunted house.
The siblings Ezri, Eve & Emannuelle have escaped their childhood home but return when their parents go missing. Finally they uncover the truth about their home and their youth.

I had no idea where the book was heading but I loved it despite the sadness and darkness.

I am a few days in our cabin at the coast and thought I needed a break from all the longlists I‘ve been following lately. No better comfort read than a thriller and I ended up reading all day and finishing this second book in the DCI Matilda Darke series.
The plot is good but the atmosphere and the main characters really stand out.

At first I didn‘t know what to make of this book. Were it loosely connected stories, all set in a fantasy setting? YA maybe? And then I got it and I got the message. A book that packs a punch in a quite unexpected way(to me) and well deserves its place on the #InternationalBooker shortlist!

A Dutch book that‘s been nominated for some literary prize. I usually love this author but was a bit disappointed by this one. It‘s about a women who gets a bit obsessed about a neighbor and finds a way to get into his house when he‘s out. She knows a lot about him when she coincidentally comes across him on Tinder and they start dating. A light pick.

The #InternationalBooker shortlist will be announced tomorrow. So far I have read 5 books. Favorites are Perfection and Hunchback but I also liked Eurotrash and Calculation of Volume. I am now reading Under the Eye of the Big Bird and liking that one too. Oh and I have Reservoir Bitches, On a Woman‘s Madness and The Book of Disappearance to be read and I want to read Small Boat too. The shortlist is coming too soon! Any thoughts on the longlist?

#InternationalBooker

This was good and frightening. A woman gets caught up in the 18th of November. Every morning she wakes up to the same day. She thinks of ways to escape and get on with her life. It is a quiet book, and somehow it felt believable. I do want to read part II!

I very much enjoyed this #WP25 longlist book. It‘s a quiet story about Rosa‘s life. Born in Poland wheee she witnesses the pogrom in which her family is killed. She somehow arrives in Scotland where she is adopted and lives her life. She goes through all the stages a woman goes, she‘s happy and sad, with friends and family or lonely. And yet in the back of her mind there‘s always her family, brutally murdered.

I added all my unread books to the #ISpy overview in Storygraph. In the bingo you see the ones that fit a March prompt of which I actually read just one 🤦🏻‍♀️ I hope and expect to tick off some more books during the year!

A decent thriller about a serial killer, his copycat and the cops chasing him. This may sound pretty standard for this kind of book, but it has a lot of suspects and twists and make sure for a few hours well spent!

Now back to the #InternationalBooker!

I am okay with this #WP25 shortlist. I didn‘t read Good Girl, all others I liked except for The Persians. I am rooting for The Safekeep to win the prize.
What are your thoughts on the shortlist?

Here is my #WP25 shortlist.
It‘s just 5 because the other 3 I read (Nesting, Persians and Dream Hotel) for me were just not good enough. I loved Strout, July and Van der Wouden but they do feel a bit “last year”, I read them that long ago.
I did enjoy Fundamentally and am now reading and liking Somewhere Else.
In general I am underwhelmed by the longlist and I am not even sure if I‘ll read the shortlist. Curious which books it will be though!