'Excited, afraid, homeless, fat, dying, but at least if we made that first step we had somewhere to go, we had a purpose. And we really didn't have anything better to do at half past three on a Thursday afternoon than to start a 630-mile walk.'

'Although Pulcheria Alexandrova was already forty-three years old, her face still kept the remnants of its former beauty, and besides, she looked much younger than her age, as almost always happens with women who keep their clarity of spirit, the freshness of their impressions, and the honest, pure ardor of their hearts into old age.'

🙄 43. Old age. 🤨

#CAPBuddyRead

How are you all doing with the #CAPBuddyRead ?
I have read Part One, in which Raskolnikov is increasingly desperate and a thought experiment becomes a fixed idea. But the best laid plans etc
And Part Two, in which Raskolnikov suffers a nervous breakdown and delirium that would have had any English character of the era carted off to a private institution to die off page.
Now starting Part Three to discover if Raskolnikov gets a grip.

I did it!
As in, I finished this absolute tome of a history book and with it I reached my yearly goal of 12 non-fiction books. And there's even a month and a half left for me to add a couple more (much shorter and faster reads).
#NonFictionNovember #WomensPrize #NonFiction

I don't have the will or the energy to make a video, so here's my #Booker winner prediction and shortlist ranking:

Personal faves: James and Stone Yard Devotional
Quite liked: Orbital and The Safekeep
Don't think succeeded in what it set out to do: Creation Lake
Actively disliked: Held

Book I think will win: James or Held.
Sure hope it is James.

My #tbr this 24-hour #readathon
Plus the tagged book, which is on my kindle.
I'm halfway through 'Salem's Lot and would like to finish it this weekend, but I'll probably take breaks to read some of the other books.

'We imagine we would've been that person, the one who would've written the letter, who would've spoken out, would've hidden the Jews, would've provided the stop on the Underground Railroad.
We say this to ourselves as the world literally burns, as militarized police forces murder citizens, as children are held in camps at our own borders.'

I almost bailed 20 pages in. Glad I didn't. Is the prose excessively elaborate? Definitely. But once you settle into the narrative it works. The stories are so uncomfortable and brutal in content that plain language would render them too stark to bear. And the magical realism/SF combo allows for each idea to be followed to its extreme, but it also allows for hope. This book is female pain/love/rage/friendship/vengeance. But never despair.

And so, this politician of petulance and infant spite, this Grande Toddler King, had stamped his small feet until the whole world rippled around him. He closed all the borders to the country, and at first the algorithmic majority cheered, waving flags of tabloid front pages. It was too late by the time we realised that it meant we could not leave either.

"Gangs are a kind of grief. They begin as friendships and end as funerals. (...) Where there is poverty and cruelty, there will rise a gang. But they are chiefly cannibals, who target their own and eat their families, their girlfriends, their neighbours, their old classmates. They rarely attack those who are the cause of their sorrow."

So many people have raved about this book. I just started it and it is... Weird. Which normally I like, but this is both SF and magical realism, and it's not so much conceptually weird as poetically weird on a sentence level. On practically every sentence. I looked up the author bio and yes, she's a poet. Also a Spoken Word Artist. I don't know 😬 I don't tend to do well with poetic novels.

Found among the travelogues, this book from 1894: A Winter Jaunt to (that most exotic and daring destination, "hitherto (...) practically unknown to Englishmen") Norway in winter!

By Mrs Alec Tweedie (née Harley) - a woman without even a first name of her own, but possessed of wanderlust and a decent travel budget, (not to mention a brother already at her destination).

#Gladstones24

Every year at #GladstonesLibrary I come across at least one title that amuses me (or makes me cringe - I still haven't gotten over "Journeys Among the Gentle Japs")
This year I present to you: CHEAP TRACTS
Entertaining, moral and religious, (not to mention cheap) repository tracts - for the use of W. E. Gladstone's servants in 1833.

This is what happens when I spend a couple of days with fellow Littens. Suddenly I have seven new books and a pile of bookish swag 😂

#Gladstones24
#Bookhaul
#TBRimplosion
#INeedMoreBookshelves
#MyPretties

'At first I thought, to be a parent you have to be an idealist. Then I learnt that to be a parent is to be continually coming up against everything that is not ideal about you.'

This chapter about family dynamics, patriarchy, and women's (lack of) rights in India in the 20th century was both fascinating and horrifying. A reminder that for a really good chunk of history and a vast amount of human societies women have had a really effing rotten deal. Some of the case studies/examples were really difficult to read about. (But also, shout out to the OG Bandit Queen, Phoolan Devi. Badass to the max.)

I'm going in.
I aim to hopefully read at least a chapter per day. Actually started it last night, but only got through the Foreword and Translator's Note, then fell asleep. Hope that's not a sign 😅

I'm reading the Pevear & Volokhonsky translation. What's everyone else going with?
#CAPbuddyread

"Nobody wanted to be reminded of what was happening in other parts of the world. (...) To speak of the catastrophe was an offence under the new regulations. The rule was to choose not to know."

I liked this a lot more than I expected to! It had innovative storytelling and just the right amount of quirky and feral teen girl energy. Will it stand out in my mind a year from now? Probably not. But I really enjoyed my time with it. In all but the final match it was perhaps too easy to work out who would win based on how their story was told, but in the end that's not truly what the book is about.
(Personally I was #TeamWeirdHatEnergy)
#Booker

This book broke my heart. Brutal and beautiful. A drop of magical realism. Three lives separated in time and place, connected by a drop of water, the Tigris, and the Epic of Gilgamesh. I found it a bit hard to get into the present tense narration, but all three narratives gripped me. (Content warnings, but the most horrific events are off page and there's nothing gratuitous.) I fully expect to see this listed for the Women's Prize next year.

Entertaining political satire that juxtaposes cancel culture and laissez-faire capitalism and seems scarily not too far fetched. Does the end ever justify the means? To what extent would you sacrifice your principles if you could literally save the world? Does one bad deed erase your good? (And many other questions). Impressive debut; I look forward to his next book.

When you have the perfect bookmark for a book. 💙

The wording here! ?

"At the time of writing Sheikh Hasina is the prime minister of Bangladesh; but Mujib's death was followed by three military coups in quick succession."

Hasina was still PM at the time of publication, just, and the 5th coup in 50 years was more a student uprising (eventually) backed by the military. (And no assassination) Still, the way that sentence goes seems almost prescient.

I've still only read five, but I have to make a guess about the #Booker shortlist. 😅 I think the shortlist will be
James
My Friends
Stone Yard Devotional
This Strange Eventful History
The Safekeep
Orbital

But I've gone back and forth on this so many times 😂 The only ones I feel relatively sure about are James and My Friends.

My hold for My Friends finally came in. I've waited months! But I can't read it yet because the other two are due back. 😣

Actually, I'm sure both of them are great too, so what am I complaining about? 😂

#BookwormProblems

I have a theory that readers from continental Europe, unless they are quite young, clock the plot twist/part 3 reveal already in the first chapter. But I quite enjoyed it even though I spent the first half of the book frustrated with the MC. 😂 She was a thoroughly unlikeable character, and I loved getting to know why she was that way. Unlike some, I really liked the ending. I hope this gets shortlisted.
#Booker

This story of how war and loss reverberates through generations could have been powerful and poignant, but due to the choppy, episodic nature of the plot and the overwrought and pompous prose, it was mainly irritating, confusing, and dull. Those who click with the prose love it, so I guess it's a marmite book. The first #Booker 2024 that I actively dislike.

"Charming older men are 'silver foxes', but flirtatious middle-aged women are 'cougars'. Or, as my mother used to say, 'mutton dressed as lamb'. To be an older woman is to be fair game for ridicule. Your desire can be held against you, or worse, turned into a joke.

I am tired of being called a large cat or an old sheep or a female dog."

My latest crop of un-renewable library books. Two of them from the #Booker longlist. Breakdown is due back first, then the other three. Fortunately all are fairly short, but they are wildly different in font size and formatting. Are any of them really quick, fast paced reads? 😅 From what I've heard there seems a fair chance that I'll read 30 pages of Held and bail 🤪

I really enjoy this #Booker longlisted book about an Australian woman deciding to abandon everything to live amongst nuns. But even more than wondering why she's there, I've been wondering why does Richard Gittens keep hanging out with them as their self-appointed, unofficial handyman? 😆

My Booker reading is going nowhere this month, as I have to read books in the order that they are due back to the library. 😛
On the bright side, it pushed me to read these three books which are all excellent. I haven't finished The Coast Road yet, but unless the ending is terrible I predict five stars. I'm also pleasantly surprised at the skill and empathy with which the male author has written the female characters.

President Invective! ? No need to know in what year this is set in order to figure out who the President is.

"The sort of man whose unwavering assertions of his own genius competence had, to the American public, apparently overwhelmed all observable evidence to the contrary."

This was a good balance of funny and horrific, the narrator Lampo both a tragic hero and a bumbling fool. The tone was perhaps a bit too modern, Lampo sounded like an Irishman, but in a way it added to the sense of theatre. (Who knows what a potter in ancient Syracuse sounded like anyway?) And fortunately it is not (post-post-post?) modern in its ending. On the contrary, the final sentence makes you nod in agreement, fully satisfied with the story

Common sense is common, has no imagination, and it only works by precedent. It leaves the man who follows it poorer, if not in pocket, then in his heart. Fuck common sense.

1.In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit
2The Island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards.
3."I wonder when in the world you're going to do anything, Rudolf?" said my brother's wife
4.Harriet Vane sat at her writing-table and stared out into Mecklenburg Square
5.When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake - not a very big one.

This was different, both in style and content. It made me quite emotional. A really quick read, easily done in one sitting.

I'm still reading Ducks, Newburyport (yes, still!) and decided I needed more mountain lion content. What better than the novella known as "the queer mountain lion book"? ? The Opening lines are promising.

I thought the premise of this book (girl has crush on her professor who is interested in someone else) sounded really cringe and utterly uninteresting. But people kept saying it was really great, so I gave it a try. Turns out people were right. And that premise is just a kickoff point, not what the story is about. This was a funny, VERY Irish (deliberately so) story about love, friendship and becoming an adult in a provincial city during recession

A fun heist. Very Ocean's 8, only set in 1905 and they're robbing a mansion. Some of the character subplots bog the story down a bit, without actually letting us get invested in them, and some characters we barely get to know at all. But overall this was very entertaining. Would make a fun movie for sure.

"But if rapiers are forbidden, one must have recourse to toads. Moreover toads and laughter between them sometimes do what cold steel cannot."

(Orlando wishes she could challenge an unwanted suitor to a duel, but gets rid of him by dropping a small toad down his collar and laughing at him.)

I'm confused by this sentence. What is she worried about? Getting robbed? Assaulted? Gossip? What do council donations have to do with anything? What *do* council donations protect you from? And who lets strangers into the house anyway?! Why would a stranger even be at the door? Why is this a distinction worth taking up space in the character's head? 🤪

#CampLitsy

Actually remembered to update my #ReadYourKindle list this month 🎉😅

@CBee

Library holds came in. I'm very excited to read all of these, but slightly inconvenienced that none of them are on the Booker longlist 😆 Another busy reading month ahead, clearly.

Almost every sentence in this book seemed like it carried a double meaning that I didn't catch because I don't know enough about East German history/politics. And without that subtext it just becomes an increasingly weird romance between a student and a married man 39y older that goes: insta-love - unhealthy codependency - completely toxic and abusive. I enjoyed the glimpses into culture and daily life, but the main story just had me bewildered.

Wth?! I'm five pages into this book the narrator seems almost manically weird. And that's saying something considering I'm also 500 pages into the ditzy word association game that is Ducks, Newburyport.

A lot of people rave about this book, but I've also heard some things that make me hesitant. About to find out for myself.

#InternationalBooker

Soft pick. Not really SK at his best. Most of the short stories were enjoyable enough, but not memorable. The line editors and/or researchers could have done their jobs better, because there are some glaring mistakes in several stories. That said, the two novellas were solid. One of them (featuring a character from Cujo) really creeped me out. And there were a couple of other stories that might linger for a while.

I haven't actually updated my #ReadYourKindle list since February. It doesn't matter much because while I have read Kindle books only 2 of them have been from the list 🤦🏻‍♀️ This month's numbers are looking good though. I hope to manage at least two of these, probably starting with The Sword of Kaigen.

@CBee

'"The sky is blue,' he said, 'the grass is green.' Looking up, he saw that, on the contrary, the sky is like the veils which a thousand Madonnas have let fall from their hair; and the grass fleets and darkens like a flight of girls fleeing the embraces of hairy satyrs from enchanted woods."

(Orlando tries, and fails, to purge himself of metaphor ?)

'But worse was to come. For once the disease of reading has laid hold upon the system it weakens it so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the inkpot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.'