This is a slow, quiet character study of a man who is supposed to be moving houses but cannot seem to make himself. The professor contemplates his life and how he got to where he is. I thought it was interesting, but maybe a bit too scattered I really enjoyed the bits about his time excavating Native areas in New Mexico but thought the jump from that to other topics was too abrasive.
Still enjoyed it, I always like Cather's writing

#Weeklyforecast trying to finish up the #WP25 this week, not sure I can make it! The tagged is my #doublespin for this month should finish it today
I started Chuck Tingle yesterday and I am obsessed, then going back to A Little Trickerie which I was excited for but which has proven not as easy to get started on.
Disappoint Me on my Kobo for Trans Awareness Readathon

I spent 10 years working events at Barnes and Nobles up and down the West Coast, and I now live in PDX with Powell's books so I have been lucky enough to meet and work with a few big names some are so terrible I don't read their books, some are utter delights!!
Some of my favorites: Carlos Ruiz Zafon (RIP), Angie Thomas, Jodi Picoult (who I still call Jodi Pickles in my head) Patrick Rothfuss, Aiden Thomas, and Curtis Sittenfeld

My first book for the #TransRightsReadathon is one I found in an article interviewing Torrey Peters on her recommended Trans books. It wasn't on my radar before.

I tried the audio and kept getting confused on the timeline. I liked this, I understand why it won so many awards. It is fresh and interesting. I think my expectations were set a bit too high. The writing is great, I liked Breq as a character, I just wanted a bit more action maybe. Where it is a lot about interpersonal relationships.
Still great read 4/5 ☀️

I haven't seen people talking about this new book prize, Climate Fiction Prize. This is the first year, and the shortlist was announced today
https://climatefictionprize.co.uk/2025-prize/shortlist/

This is interesting, if not at all surprising.
I remember the first time I was called a feminist - I was 10 or 11 and my cousin used it as a dirty word against me, I had no clue what it meant but the next 35 years I have really Leaned in 😂

I scored lower on cultural feminist I think because I believe that women can be just as brutal as men.... Thinking of the tagged

Thanks @Catsandbooks for this!

One week until the shortlist drops!!

Any you are hoping to see?

I am struggling to get things from the library off this list, but I hope the ones I bought are here - Private Revolutions, Tracker, Peepshow. Them being on the shortlist might push me to read them!

The online website is still struggling so my list for people to tag isn't coming up sorry about that!

Book 9 #WP25
This is a low pick for me. The last 100 pages were a bit of a struggle, I didn't want to pick it up and read more about her self destruction, but I was still interested in her life as an Afghani-German and what it was like as a German immigrant with so much hate that we don't talk about.
The writing throughout is solid, and the perspective is one I don't see a lot of in English Lit so it makes sense why this was chosen for the WP

The trans rights annual readathon is almost here!

March 21-31

I will be reading:

Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan
Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi
Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg

#WeeklyForecast
#WP25 I have 100 pages left of the tagged then I can start A Little Trickerie which I am super excited for
🎧This week's listen will be Ancillary Justice my January #DoubleSpin

Then hoping to sneak in The Coin which needs to go back to the library.

Book 8 #WP25
Phew that was good. Love a book where I can catch myself shouting at the characters.
This is a tense book. Ciara (pronounced K-ear-a which, glad I listened to this I wouldn't have in my brain) has left her abusive husband but it is a struggle, so many people probably do not see him as abusive but her fear is palpable on the page.
Great writing, and really eye opening about the housing crisis in Ireland
4.25/5

"Yet the hymns, the hosannas and hevenu shalom aleichem, the psalms, the lessons of Genesis and Revolution, they did not remain. What remains is the searing loneliness I felt, the nights I stayed awake by myself, reading Wuthering Heights and Lolita, underlining everything, trying to forget the fact I was one of the only girls at school who had black hair.

#WP25

Women's Prize nonfiction long list

I enjoyed this! It was a quick read, Cherry is an empathetic and understanding person. I love that her whole family and everyone in her orbit are true artists. I appreciate how she can see people's flaws and love them anyways
I thought she was a good storyteller, she reiterated issues she found important but always kept the story pushing forward
I honestly thought Eagle -Eye Cherry was a band name...
3.75/5

#weekendreads are all about women, music, partying

Neneh Cherry - A Thousand Threads #WPNF25
Aria Aber - Good Girl #WP25
Maud Ventura - Make Me Famous #ARC

“If everything was amazing all of the time, I think we‘d all be speechless, and if you make that your starting point for creativity, you‘re going nowhere.”

I thought this was such an interesting take about creativity. About how you have to have downtime and sometimes some things that are not amazing are just as important as amazing things.

#WPNF25 Also I love this cover of her as a babe so cute!

Oh no. Everyone loves this and I am struggling. This is taking me back to college where to get my chem degree I had to take some geology and biology classes and was bored outta my mind. I do love that she is using the Māori word Aotearoa for what we call New Zealand.
I hope I can get more interested in this as we go along but 2 chapters in and so far, not so good

Big news for our Marilynne Robinson fans!

It is impossible to judge a memoir of a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. Mukasonga had escaped through Burundi, married a French man and was living in France when 27 of her family members were murdered. She is a survivor, and with that comes guilt and a desire to tell her story.
I think it is helpful to know about this time and place before going in, she does not attempt to explain the politics or landscape (I had a map open while reading)
4/5⭐

#WP25 book 7/15
This is very good. It has feelings of Handmaid's Tale to it while being wildly different. The story focuses on a group of women but we know women are not the only ones targeted. The crimes they "might" commit are hypothetical. If you were not paranoid about government monitoring before reading this you soon will be. Everything here feels horrifically plausible (thinking of Musks brain implants people are actually getting)
4/5

Reading about how the Rwandan regime made the Tutsi people dig up food to plant coffee plants that the government would sell and keep the money from as I sit drinking coffee halfway across the world and 60 years later.
This is not a pleasant book but so important, especially today and thinking that I had believed that the '96 Genocide happened pretty much overnight but learning it was a 40 year battle.

I think I like the name on the American publication best - The Artist and The Feast. It fits the story better.
At first I thought this was overwritten and I wasn't sure I would get along with it. But after a bit either she toned it down or I just got use to it and it didn't bother me. I loved how the chapters go from mostly Joseph's POV to mostly Ettie as we see more and more of her layers and she comes out from behind her uncle (The Artist)👇

The #WPNF25 nonfiction list has taken a total back seat to the fiction prize for me, but I do have Wild Sea, and Cherry's autobiography checked out from the library so I will be reading one of those as I wait for more fiction books to arrive in the mail.

So far I have read 2 - Autocracy and Fish. How is everyone else doing?

#WP25
How are people liking the list? Are you able to get your hands on all the books you want?
I am doing pretty well from the jump on the fiction side. I will not be reading Adichie due to her transphobia, but I do think I have decided to read Strout even though I have only read one of hers and found it a bit boring.

I am finishing The Artist now (30pgs left) and have started Dream Hotel, now just to wait for the rest to come in mail.

I found this boarding pass in my used book!
John here is going from Shannon to London on the 29th of May (year unknown) and he is in the smoking section!

Amazing how an Ireland to England flight stub ends up in a used bookstore in Portland Oregon.

Found a nail in my tire as I was running errands, now patiently waiting the tire guys to clear me to drive, and this is why we never leave home without a book.
Starting this #bookedintime read so far it is a bit wordy for me but going to push through and hope I can get in the groove

Book 5 #WP25

I loved this!! The biting humor (jokes about Elizabeth Warren's 1/8 Cherokee claims, sandstorms being micro dermabrasion, and milkshakes for Nigel Farage) mixed with a more serious and deep ideas around the UN, aide workers, and extreme Islamists.
Younis worked in Iraq for 10 years as an aide worker. This unique perspective allows for the author to be one of the few who can accurately and compassionately tell this story.

Book name drop on this week's Abbott Elementary which is all about something I know people here are passionate about - book banning.

If you gave not watched this show you need to it is amazing 😍

I think it is best to go into this not knowing much, I feel like I expected something a bit more crime based from the synopsis. But this is more of a character study of a VERY unpleasant woman in the middle of a South African drought. Props to the writing here it feels visceral - the dryness the smells, it is uncomfortable. I felt a bit at sea about when things were happening. Overall not a favorite Women's Prize read. #WP25

I didn't realize until the end how autobiographical this was. To the point that Ditlevsen doesn't even change any of her 4 husbands names. This is a sad story, without a happy ending. It was originally 3 short novellas Childhood (where Tove is told over and over how ugly and stupid she is) Youth (where she starts to write and come into her own & starts jumping from man to man) & Dependency (more men and throw in drug addiction) 👇

Glad I have a cat, because I am finishing these 2 incredibly bleak books tonight and will need some pet loves. I hope my next reads are a bit more fun.

#WP25
“I was asked by the Iraqi government to design a program to deradicalize ISIS women. It got me thinking about my years as a religious teenager. When I was seventeen, I studied with the cleric Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni-American preacher who was smart, charming and inspiring. He later joined Al-Qaeda. I‘d always wondered what I‘d have done, in those naïve teenage years, had he tried to recruit me.“

Art outside the library 😍

These will be my first reads off the #WP25 long list! I have read 3 before the list dropped, I got lucky and scored The Artist from Edelweiss and Crooked Seeds was at my library, just waiting for me!

It looks like the US version of The Artist will be called The Artist and The Feast and Edelweiss has our release date set for May 5, over a month after the shortlist drops.

Thank you @BarbaraBB! I LOVE a quiz. I am super excited my results of the first Booker International I should read I already have a hold on at the library. I am #3 of 5 copies so hopefully soon!

So many books, so little time.

If you too want to take the booker quiz you can @ https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/features/quiz-which-book-from-the...

Oh goodness. Should I say, I feel a bit disappointed in this list? I am hoping to pull some good reads out of here, there are a couple I am excited to read, but overall not so much.

I am really disappointed in the choice to have Adichie on the list, given her past statements and controversies around the Trans community. I actually might chose to read a Trans author book instead of reading this one even though it is on this list.
'

This is incredibly good. The story of a group of women from all walks of life rising up against the violence they are subjected to. The story is set on a fictional island, obviously modeled after Trinidad. The characters and island are drawn vibrantly, and the story while tackling serious and dark subjects is filled with hope. I loved the writing and the whole story. I loved how diverse - through love, position and religion the women were. 4.5/5

A little over a day before the big Fiction Long List drops!!

How have you done on the NF list? I know some are plowing through this like true bookworms! I have been very distracted by books I need to get back to the library, or ARCs that are going to disappear soon. So I have only read 2 of the non-fiction, but I do plan on reading most all of these no matter the short list.

"Truth is, we are as fluid and diverse in our sexuality as anywhere else. But church and state run hard-line conservative values and stories you know. To win votes."
"Well, write that."
"Okay."
"It sounds like America."
"Where there's God-men, women are repressed," she said....

#sunday

This was fun! Bookish Minerva needs to get to a geology symposium and she convinces rouge Colin to take her. This is #2 in a series, I didn't read #1 and you don't need to. They all start in the same town, but are all stand-alones. I found this to be funny and charming so much so I am going to read #4 also (the other 2 are centering military and that is not for me)
A nice historical romance with a smart women MC.

2 seconds ago this cafe was so crowded you could barely move. Now the quiet sets in.

Reading the new Torrey Peters

#ReadingWrapUp February
5 ⭐
My Friends -Backman
4.5⭐
The Book Censor's Library
A Body Made of Glass
Private Rites
4⭐
Wandering Stars
Divine Rivals
The Echoes
Rejection
The $12Million Stuffed Shark
The Beautiful Ones
Shy Creatures
Freedom - Markel
3.5⭐
Vanishing Treasures
Autocracy, Inc.
3⭐
Universality

Welcome March and The Women's Prize!!

So somehow I read 15 books in Feb. but only got one Bingo.

I read my #Bookspin but didn't get to my #DoubleSpin It is in the queue still though. I will get to it, I know it is really good.

Do you ever finish a book that is getting rave reviews and you just don't really get it? And you wonder if it's you or if the reviews are just going off the synopsis and didn't actually read the book? This started well for me, it had Eleanor Catton Birnam Wood vibes, but each chapter shifts, and POV shift I felt a bit more at sea and a bit more bored.
If you are super into British politics and hearing from "anti-woke" characters you might like it

I am not sure, not being a German, how she is viewed in her home country. But as an American I find her book to be incredibly level headed. She strikes a balance between defending her actions and being humble of what she sees as errors she made. The book lags a bit in the middle (one awful chapter where she alphabetically lists all her meetings, yikes, should have been scrapped) but the beginning & end clipped along well.
4/5

Last weekend was the perfect time to read this book set in a future London where it rains, and rains. It is a story of 3 sisters in a drowning London, and there is an ominous tone throughout - though my one critique is that this could have been ramped up a bit. I liked that the sisters are not great people but also not terrible, you never wish bad for them but you also can find them a bit frustrating (in I thought a good interesting way)
4.25/5

This is our now at your local bookstore, it should be required reading for all Westerners. El Akkad talks about not just Palestine but about many other countries and how the west puts money over people.

Essential reading.