#nyrbbookclub
If you asked Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde to write a sitcom, this might be the result. You can hear the laugh track after Nance counters her father's rudeness with sardonic barbs, or after the dopey commentary of curious neighbors who react to the soap opera plot twists. The comic banter isn't a diversion, it's the core of the novel: dialogue is all we have, which gives it a lightness, even as it probes the darker sides of society.

Smith's update of Howards End is a big novel with rich characters who grapple with weighty societal controversies involving race, class, justice, and family dynamics. Lots to unpack, but I enjoyed seeing the tradition of old novels about grand ideas applied in a modern context. The characters were all equally fascinating and her writing in dialect made them more real (even when it's not perfect). I also found the drama multilayered and intense.

I kept rereading this over and over. It's just an ordinary moment between and elderly father and his adult son, but...wow. So much in so few words.

So many angles are explored in these episodes of high school friendship: tensions brought on by a looming graduation, dealing with assholes, romantic insecurities, coping with soul-crushing suburban conformity and the joys in finding exceptions. The artwork highlights the cynical humor and brooding emotions perfectly. I still like the movie better, but it's a favorite, so it would have been tough to top. Thora Birch's Enid is the best 🖤

The mysteries were a little thin, as were some of the characters (Brodie included). The heteronormative and racial humor (i.e. the whole cat thing) was cringey. Some of the end resolutions were implausible to the point of absurdity. So why did I like this? I think the dark humor that did land was very funny but also blended with the sadder moments surprisingly well. It was also very self-referential, which I always enjoy 👇

#bookhaul 2/2
A two-bookstore day is a rare treat and it led to these choices. Homes is the only author I've read before (May We Be Forgiven was one favorite from 2018). I've wanted to try Yoshimoto for awhile and can't resist a plot like N.P.' s. Bradbury is another long on my list, and I made sci-fi short stories a 2020 reading goal. Never heard of Ashour until a Book Riot list of top works by Egyptian authors, and the first page sold me.

#bookhaul 1/2
In 2016, Noelle Santos joined protesters to try and save the last bookstore in the Bronx (a Barnes & Noble) from closing. It did close, and then Santos decided to open her own: the Lit Bar, a fabulous book store + wine bar that opened in 2019. Loved it - interesting shelves, gorgeous artwork and overall aesthetics, friendly staff, and a comfy couch where I got to read with a glass of Merlot. And I walked away with these ☺📚🍷

#BelowZer00s
The early 2000s were a decade of both undergrad and grad education, but not the greatest either with a failed 3-year marriage and disappointing job prospects after the financial crisis. It also had a poor soundtrack: I was not into music much and unaware of contemporary stuff. That changed in 2009: I made some new friends who introduced me to everything I'd missed- they and the music made a huge difference in lifting my spirits!

What an odd little story collection (Rixdorf Editions). The stories are written in 2nd person plural and often involve a group of travelers who encounter a possibly supernatural figure, someone who might be a revenant, a hallucination, a psychic...or maybe just eccentric? Reventlow herself was a rising feminist/bohemian icon in pre-WWI Europe until her life ended in a bicycle accident: that and the war led to her work being all-but forgotten.

If you read Sapiens as just a more interesting textbook, you might enjoy it less. We're not accustomed to scientific books that place things as varied as human rights, capitalism, and religion in the same bucket of human myths. But if you read Sapiens as the attempt to tell humankind as an interesting story, one informed by science but not boxed in by it, it's a creative bird's-eye view of human history that is weirdly thrilling in a way.

#19in2019
Classics: Beloved, We Have Always Lived in the 🏰 Howards End, The Waves, ❤ Medicine, The 🌍 According to Garp
Future Classics: Constellation of Vital Phenomenon, Station 11, Swamplandia
Non-fiction: The Red Parts, Blue Nights, Stiff, I Am I Am I Am, The Uninhabitable 🌍, The Fire Next Time
Defies Categories: Pastoralia, Invisible Cities, White is for Witching, and my favorite book of the year 🥁🥁....

🦊Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi🦊

This terrific debut has a wonderful variety of stories in different genres and time periods where adventures might include a mysterious cave, a mermaid, or an alien invasion to name a few. Similar themes run through the tales: characters are bored by their daily lives and embrace experiences that, while dangerous, shake them out of their malaise. Recommended for those who aren't usually short story fans: a little something for everyone here.

Impressive debut: it uses an interesting narrative structure to dramatize the main character's identity. Even though it was avant garde in some ways, it also felt very authentic to look at identity as being ruled by a collection of personas that emerge in different situations. I also loved how Emezi explores difficult moral questions without simplifying what occurs into any kind of message. I'm excited to see where her career takes her!

@merelybookish Thanks Margot for the Christmas card and super cool bookmark! I love the Kafka bean 😃 Hope your holidays have been good!

#lastfirst
Great idea @BookNAround - thanks for organizing this giveaway.
The tagged book from Rixdorf Editions wasn't going to be my last of the year but an alligator on a leash just feels right. I'd never heard of Reventlow, but she was an early 20th century German author who sounds like she was ahead of her time based on her bio. Then it's On Beauty to kick off 2020!

If you're a fan of indie rock in the early 2000s, this is a must-read, especially if you're like me and found out late about the NYC explosion launched by bands like the Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Interpol. But for all of the work Goodman must have done to select the best material from the source interviews to tell the story, it still feels overlong with a lopsided focus on scene aspects (i.e. drugs, partying) rather than the music itself 👇

Interesting time capsule of a novel: Hughes writes with gritty realism about taboo subjects of her time: undisguised racism on the cusp of the Civil Rights era and the world of back-alley abortions. It was intense to see the MC forced into the detective role to protect both his freedom and reputation. I only wish I enjoyed the mystery itself, which seemed a little flat. I might have liked the ending more if I wasn't reading it as a mystery novel.

#nyrbbookclub
I never heard of this phrase, but I like it and may begin using it 😁

I've read plenty of books that include scenes of rape or torture, but this is the first that is primarily about the effects that rape and torture have on body, mind, and relationships. Gay's prose gives a glimpse into the sizable gap between familiarity with traumatic events and the experience of a survivor. There are no easy answers or cop outs: the novel faces the reality of sexual violence, its roots, and all the ugly societal implications.

The next time you need a laugh, give this one a try. The entire book is transcripts of email conversations from responses to gag internet ads the author placed, mostly for paid gigs ranging from an actor to recreate a recurring nightmare involving a murderous spider to contactor for an in-ground apartment pool to human piñata. I highly recommend the audio version as the conversations are more acted than narrated, which adds to the comedy.

#top10ofthedecade #nonfictionedition

Unlike my fiction list, there are plenty of favorites from the second half of the decade (I listen to NF on audio which helps- no waiting for paperback releases). Half of these are memoir, which is what I read most often. I think my two favorites are Brown Girl Dreaming and H is for Hawk, but Hunger, Secondhand Time, and Blue Nights are all pretty close.

@Cinfhen

#top10ofthedecade #fictionedition

This was interesting to compile. I'm such a backlister that this list was half of all my 5 star reviews of the decade, none are more recent than 2015, and I read all of them except one in the past two years. But...they are all amazing: no slackers here!

@Cinfhen

I'm not sure why it took me so long to read George Saunders : I wasn't sure I'd like him based on what I'd heard. I was very wrong: each of these stories cracked me up--the dialogue was hilarious. They were also touching in spots. I enjoyed how he dramatized the imaginations of his characters: it gave you insight into what they desired and how they saw themselves. Pastoralia and Sea Oak were my favorites.

I'm not usually a true crime fan, but I think this one is different than most. For one thing, Nelson already wrote a book about her aunt's cold case murder -- now having an arrest and trial made Nelson look back on her time working on the first book. She describes having 'murder mind': the effects of constant attention to the details of a violent crime and contrasts that experience with seeing the grisly details of the case in court 👇

Much better than Vol 1. The same mesmerizing artwork, but this time the story arc is more cohesive and stoked my curiosity as it went. I also thought the stories within each issue were stronger: I'm not a big fan of serial killer horror stories, but the 'Cereal Convention' was a creative take on this genre. I enjoyed the trip through time in 'Men of Good Fortune', even if it had little to do with the main story. And The Corinthian... 😨

An 'almost-pick', this first volume of the series provides an excellent glimpse into the nightmarish Sandman world, with creepy and imaginative artwork to match. Not easy for me to review comics or graphic novels (still pretty new to me), but the various conflicts all seemed to lack a dramatic edge. Maybe it was the absence of a villain to match Sandman's formidable presence and mystique? But I'm definitely looking forward to reading more.

#Amazing #MOvember

It's been so much fun trading music and book connections these past few years. Thanks for organizing such an amazing challenge, Cindy! It was a great way to meet so many people and see everyone's creativity. Not to mention the songs themselves - I had the daily song stuck in my head many times. I'll miss it, but looking forward to sharing in future Litsy events with everyone! 😃🎵🎸🎹🥁🎶👏👏👏
@Cinfhen

#IllRemember #MOvember
Just read the Orwell essay 'Such, Such Were the Joys' about the horrors of attending an English boarding school before the first World War. The living conditions were deplorable, but he also talks about the importance of remembering how children see the world to put the psychological impact of the authority his teachers wielded, and other aspects of the class divide into context.
@Cinfhen

#nyrbbookclub
It's difficult to watch Judith's hopes for a traditional family life dissolve in such a short period of time. Her subsequent crisis of faith is developed in heartbreaking detail and serves as the soul of a novel with few sympathetic characters to soften its stark realism. The way everyone talks about Judith in her absence disturbed me most, casual cruelty no less common today than in 1955. Looking forward to tomorrow's discussion!

#holiday #MOvember

A few books I've read while on a holiday. The top three were from this year 📆🕶🎒🛩

@Cinfhen

#nyrbbookclub

My library hold came in just in time - a Thanksgiving miracle! My fiancee who had a half day today was awesome enough to pick it up from the library so I could have it for the holiday.

Now to see if I can finish by Saturday for the discussion..🤞

#fever #MOvember

🎶He gave her fever..

@Cinfhen

#rayoflight #MOvember

I still need to read Ray Bradbury one of these days. I keep seeing all these glowing Litsy posts about his work, and it's the time of year to reading resolutions for 2020, so I'm going to make this my first. #readingresolutions @Cinfhen

Thanks @LeahBergen for recommending this fantastic trip through the weird world of 70s and 80s horror books. I think Hendrix made a critical decision for this project: even though there's some attention to why certain themes became popular and publishing industry trends, the crazy plot summaries are the focus. And the audio narrator reminded me of a movie trailer voice for heartwarming family films, which worked really well for some reason 😁

#Hollywood #MOvember
The Player is one of my favorite movies, and I've always been curious to try the novel. Griffin Mill is a big-time Hollywood exec who listens to pitches from writers to find a very special few to turn into dull and cliche feature films. When he starts getting death threats he assumes they're from a writer whose script he passed over, but there's far too many to narrow it down. What follows is black comedy gold.
@Cinfhen

Yes it is ☺

I can't believe it took me this long to visit The Center for Fiction in Brooklyn. I was there for a reading by Mary Gaitskill from the tagged book with actor Ron Rifkin. Great discussion on the complicated nature of some Me Too situations that the novella delves into. And of course, I left with some books... pretty perfect night!

"It was, however illogically, the good, the beautiful, the true, as opposed to the respectable, the pretty, the adequate. It was a landscape of Bocklin's beside a landscape of Leader's, strident and ill-considered, but quivering into supernatural life."
The contrast of the life of ideas led by the Schlegal sisters to the respectability of the Wilcoxes is explored in shrewd observations and sweeping musings on the changes in early ?

#luckystar #MOvember

Careful, don't look directly at it 😎

@Cinfhen

#trueblue #MOvember

Some shades of blue from my shelf 💙

@Cinfhen

#borderline #MOvember
I try not to repeat myself as much as possible, so for those of you who have already heard my tired Cormac McCarthy sermon, I apologize. But here it is again. The Road and Blood Meridian are fine novels, but books 2 and 3 of The Border Trilogy, The Crossing and Cities of the Plain, are his best (imho).
Do you all have favorites that get overshadowed by other works from the same author? I'd like to hear them!
@Cinfhen

#humannature #MOvember
My #currentread is not letting me forget that I missed yesterday's Madonna song prompt 😃
@Cinfhen

#frozen #MOvember
@Cinfhen

#LikeAPrayer #MOvember
A few from my shelf with religious themes and characters. My favorite is probably Satanic Verses, with Gilead and Meany as runners up. Siddhartha and Oranges are still TBR. Not sure if I liked the tagged book- some interesting historic/Biblical storylines, but also many gut-churning accounts of Roman emperors like Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero... pretty violent and horrific all around 🤢
@Cinfhen

#bookshopping #KeepLitsyActive
#2. Author is most: usually buy authors I've been wanting to try or those I already like.
#5. Price is next when used book shopping- it's fun to find good deals.
#3 Title and #4 length occasionally - a really good title makes me take notice, but less likely to buy doorstops.
#6 I never read professional reviews, but if I'm new to an author I'll look at Goodreads ratings.
#1 Cover yes, but unconsciously.

When a #beautifulstranger comes to Millburn, the place becomes a literal #ghosttown as a once dormant horror terrorizes the imaginations of its residents, with special ire directed towards a group of old friends who form a club of sorts to trade stories of the supernatural (some of which might be true).
Not Madonna pictured here, but I was listening to this old favorite and it seemed to fit. 😱😨
@Cinfhen

#laislabonita #MOvember
Two of the six narratives in Cloud Atlas take place on pretty islands. I'm a fan of The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing, even though it seems like the least discussed storyline. Even though it's the quietest, Mitchell nails the classic British novel style, and the island has a mysterious quality that is fun to explore.
@Cinfhen

#expressyourself #MOvember
Apparently John Self expresses himself by making a movie about money, while "living money, talking money, and spending money on all the excesses 20th-century culture has to offer: drink, dope, sex, fast food, and love."
On my TBR shelf but from that description...sounds like a terrible novel! On the other hand, Amis hasn't let me down yet, and this is probably his most famous, so I can't not read it ?‍♂️
@Cinfhen

#iconic #MOvember
I think Atwood is one of our most iconic living authors. One of my early favorite authors when I started getting into reading as an adult.
@Cinfhen

I don't plan my next reads too rigidly: I usually have a few candidates that have been on my shelf for awhile, and when I finish a book I bring them out and see which I #crave in the moment. Usually I have a one word prejudice in my head - e.g. devastating, innovative, difficult, intellectual, etc. But it's not until I read the first sentence or two that I really know what I want. One of these four will probably be next 🤔
#MOvember @Cinfhen

#sorry #MOvember

Self-explanatory I think...☺

@Cinfhen