Ma'am, you had me at "defunct sea gods"!
There's great world-building, character development aplenty and an exciting plot that plays out against a backdrop of big themes like loyalty, courage and above all integrity (metaphorically, literally, ecumenically, too, I shouldn't wonder!).
The redundant old priests and "god-ware" tech were bonuses.
I enjoyed every minute of listening to this (even if the toxic friendship parts were painful)!

In truth, I avoided this for ages out of sheer perversity because, a while back, EVERYONE was reading it.
The courtroom scenes felt like they might have hung on from a previous draft, possibly even a different book. Nor did the poetry angle add anything beneficial.
That aside, I was wholly immersed in Kya's story and loved how the marsh was presented as an active character throughout.

@DebinHawaii #5JoysFriday

It's been a while since I did one of these!

Not an easy read. I'd not seen the experience of social interaction from an autistic woman's point of view so recognisably depicted: oh, the relief!... until it started to feel all exposing and nasty.
I couldn't bear how casually cruel almost everyone was to Sunday.
I was intrigued by her fluency in sign language.
It did get rather repetitive (a saggy middle caused by all those horrendous dinners?)
I thought the ending hit the right note.

Eh, it's ok but there's not a lot depth. Better suited to a reader that hasn't done a whole load of soul-searching already.
Much as I love a system, I found the concept of 21 qualities all beginning with P facile. Serves me right for being tempted to take a shortcut: there's really no substitute for contemplating our own values and formulating our own questions in relation to them, as a means of gauging how "in tune" we are.

More cli-fi. Not bad by any means, but it does have problems.
The episodic structure through time made it difficult to connect to any of the characters.
There's a thoughtlessly ableist response to autism.
I don't know what JB's issues are around motherhood, but he's spilled them on the page.
These things I can work around: the ending I cannot (see comment under spoiler alert).

Read for Library book group: we all loved it!
I did a print/audio combo, which worked really well.
To begin with I had misgivings over the portrayal of Mart: a tad heavy-handed? Dare I say it, Oirishness-for-export? Well, in future I will trust TF to know what she's doing!
And, yes please, I would very much like a slice of that "air rich as fruitcake." ?

*contented sigh*
One of those books where it felt completely safe to put my shields down and hand myself over to the author for the duration. Yes, a major plot point is visible from space, and there were times when I wanted to shake Julia and Rose, but I loved the time I spent in the company of the Padavano family and this warm-hearted book.

Man, this is bleak, and strangely claustrophobic despite the miles and miles of sea. And yet... desolate as it is, there's hope in the acts of carefulness which the Old Man and the Boy extend to one another as they go about the routine tasks of their repetitive days in the middle of a drowned nowhere that, in deep time, used to be somewhere.

I have some catching up to do!
I'm back from a week in Pembrokeshire (my happy place)... swimming in the sea, walking along the coast path, sleeping. Surprisingly little reading.
I was delighted to discover a Little Free Library in a repurposed telephone box in a village on the edge of nowhere. 😃

Whoa, that's some heavy 💩 I am privileged not to have to navigate every damn day!
TA is an articulate, nuanced and extraordinarily confiding writer.
I read this so as to better support a trans family member.

Assumed it was a COVID novel: nope, published in 2010!
A pandemic orphan, Cole is fostered by a fundamentalist pastor & his wife. They are good, kind people but their values and culture are poles apart from those of his liberal atheist parents. What's a boy to do when he loves them both?
The stuff about rapture children made me deeply uneasy.
Don't know why some of the plot points were introduced. Not sure how I feel about such a low key ending..

Discomfiting book, this. Not entirely sure what I think about it. I suspect it acts as a mirror for the reader's own beliefs and assumptions around #metoo. I can understand how Margot would want to support her friend but, personally, I thought Quin a slime ball. Is he aware that's how he's perceived by others (women)? I'm not sure. And then the whole thing (tiny as it is) is so arch and distancing that it's just left me rattled.

Book group #libraryhaul
We had a really enjoyable book group meet-up yesterday. And, as always, there were more books to bring home 😃. The Tana French is next month's book. The others were waiting for me on the holds shelf.

I am so happy to have stumbled upon these books! 😍 Arguably this is the weakest of the trilogy (because it's the most human/planet-bound?) but it does have alien ravens arguing against their own sentience, so there's that.
And then the last quarter or so induced full-on existential vertigo, which delighted me no end!
We went on quite the adventure (iykyk 😆).

@DebinHawaii #5JoysFriday

This week has brought a pleasingly eclectic bunch of small joys. 😊

It might have been heartbreaking, had I been persuaded to give a damn about the characters but, aside from Odelle, they were for the most part insufferable to varying degrees.
And the familiar tale of women's art being attributed to men only depressed me. 😕

"And yet the birds mutter to one another in their own jabber, quote poetry that predates whole civilizations, and refuse to let her in."

Has my book just outed me as an alien raven?! ??

7 years! How time flies when you are turning pages!
Thank you, all, for making this a rare social space where I actually feel at ease. You're wonderful! 😊❤️

Read for library book group.
First off, I think the title is a misnomer, albeit catchier than "murders based on a list in a blog post".
I was curious at the start, and enjoyed how bookishly meta it was (it's even set in a bookshop) and was looking forward to seeing where it was going but it became increasingly far-fetched and began to hurtle towards the finish as if even the author just wanted it done by that point.
I liked the bookshop cat! ?

I went in for ONE book (the Tchaikovsky) that was waiting for me on the holds shelf.
What can I say? I didn't have much time to browse and I panicked! 🤣

#libraryhaul

I really enjoyed this!
It put me in mind of the drama Black Snow, with Travis Fimmel: it's Australian, has dual timelines, a young woman is murdered and the past gets raked up again, to the distress of the inhabitants of a close knit town. (Could wish for greater victim-diversity, but, as Kieran observes, "they don't go after men and babies.")

I ended up having several longer than usual cardio workouts because I didn't want to stop listening. ?

I hope this isn't destined to be read only by those who identify as women; it's a fascinating book. I especially enjoyed the chapter on language and speech ('cause words, right?).

I didn't realise it was heading towards chunkster status. A two-week audio loan would not have been my format of choice, but that's what was available. It was a thoroughly engaging if intensive listen.

If ever you are in need of mallard vagina facts, look no further!🦆

@DebinHawaii #5JoysFriday
I'm so glad you started this tag, Deb! ☺️

God, am I feeling desolate now! 😩
I was audio-crafting, but had to put my things down and give this my full attention.
Also needed to keep reminding myself that these men were actually *teenagers*.

I did find, as with other JB books I've read, that the fore-shadowing was heavy-handed. He writes very affecting stories: I just wish he'd trust his readers to join the dots without his signposting them with flashing arrows.

(Can't find in database)
Well it doesn't lack ambition... not unlike Napoleon in 1812!
I read W&P when I was 20, have seen a TV adaptation since so this caught my eye.
It was massively compressed, of course, but unfortunately to the point that narrative clarity was lost (as was I at times) and, for me, the art style was frequently confusing as it was hard to distinguish between several of the characters.
A case of "I wanted to love this but..."

@DebinHawaii #5JoysFriday

Happy Friday, everyone! ☺️

What can I say about this book?! The Littens know what they're talking about. I couldn't put it down until I *had to* because it was so distressing. And then I picked it up again. It's taken me ages to write even this paltry nothing of a review.

What I don't understand is how the whole of Litsy seems to have read it, but I was first in the holds queue at the library. 🤷

Lots of love for the "Torak books"! ❤️ I first read the original ones with my daughter when she was a kid.
The world-building is fab, the characters are loveable (Wolf!), there's plenty of jeopardy (this volume even opens with a forest-destroying comet/meteor strike) and you can rest assured that everything will come to the good in the end.
A perfect bank holiday weekend read. ☺️

@DebinHawaii #5JoysFriday

Bonus no.6 Reading everyone else's joys ☺️

I made a vegan Victoria sponge cake for Beltane! ?
Is it time for tea yet?

The recipe is from "The Naughtiest Vegan Cakes in Town". (Not sure if this is same-book-different-title as tagged: same author, anyway.) I actually made only half the amount of cake; that's ample for just three of us. ?

I'm going back in.
I had to put this book aside for a few days because it was so distressing, and rightly so.
Picking up another book meanwhile just felt disrespectful.
So here we are...

A day late, but here we are!
#5JoysFriday @DebinHawaii

Well that was quietly devastating!
It had all the uncannily perceptive interiority that I found so engrossing in The Hours (which I've read multiple times).
If I have a quibble it's that I'd have preferred longer chapters so as to spend more time with each character. Sometimes it felt a bit choppy and briefly disorienting. Deliberately, given the COVID setting? I loved how Robbie - the single brother/uncle/friend - proved to be the family's heart.

I am buzzing! I took my harp to my library's social group (we're taking it in turns to "do a thing"). So nervous beforehand I thought I might have to change my name and leave the country but I was canny and made sure I'd primed the holds shelf!
I played with shaking hands but it went well: somehow I seem to have enchanted everyone! Feeling happily overwhelmed now and full of gratitude. ?

#5JoysFriday @DebinHawaii
Reading goes without saying, right? 😄

Read for library book group: at last, something I could get my teeth into!

Set in the Victorian London shark-tank (that the Tories are intent on dragging us back to), artist's model and aspiring painter Iris seeks to live on her own terms, within the cultural corsetry that is the male gaze.
Personally, I could have done without the romance, but then we'd not have seen how similar Louis's attentions were to Silas's (just a difference of degree?)

It feels wrong to use the word "enjoyed" of a memoir of queer domestic abuse but I loved the writing and the framing of her experience through the lens of an exhaustive array of genres. It's as if she's holding it up to the light, to make sense of what was happening to her in the absence of a ready frame of reference. Does this lessen the emotional impact? Possibly. It's awful she endured the abuse. I'm glad she could make this book of it.

This was waaay too relatable at times: not the domestic squalor, nor the accidentally getting a job in a church, I mean, but the stuff that goes through Gilda's mind. Severe anxiety, depression, and intrusive thoughts are to the fore throughout but I found it affirming rather than triggering. The dark humour made me snort my tea and cackle (not at the same time)!

If there is such a thing as an anti-villain, I nominate toxically positive Giuseppe.

#5JoysFriday @DebinHawaii

Love this tag!
It's been a challenging week mental health-wise but these things have all lifted my spirits.

Today's modest #libraryhaul , at book group.
"The Doll Factory" is next month's book.
"Day" was waiting for me on the holds shelf.

Wholly illogical, I know, but the fact that both covers are my favourite colour seems to bode well! ?

And just like that the author knocks all the air out of my lungs.

Well, that was a frustrating experience! The cringey title should have told me it would be problematic. There is plenty of useful info here... but there are also multi-page digressions with little to add, and awkward phrasing throughout that became a major distraction.

English is not CL's mother-tongue and she says she's too much of a control freak to work with a translator. Her book suffers for it and is *badly* in need of a good editor.

Read for library's book group.
It's a lemon meringue pie in book form: a tang of sharpness under a mass of sugary fluff.
I couldn't care less about the romance aspect and, as a whole, it was a pleasant but formulaic read.
I'm not saying it's a bad book: I'm saying it's not to my taste.

I've been veggie since I was 15 and vegan for 3 years. There's good stuff here but I think it would be of greater benefit to those more socially-oriented than me (so, most people, then? ?).

I found the quasi-religious language off-putting, and if I never hear the phrase "animal flesh and fluids/secretions" again it will be too soon.

Most troubling was the assumption that "vegangelism" is a must: so private acts of conscience are insufficient?

Published in 2007 (and bought used for 1p!), these days it has rather a cultural historical vibe. Written/made by multiple contributors, it's an art zine in book form: kind of a grown-up version of the things my sister and I used to make in the school holidays ?. I don't really like that messy, mixed media look, but there are several projects I plan to try (and many another that are more "why on Earth would I want to make that?!"). A curiosity!

Thank God that's over! It pains me to pan a book but I did not enjoy this one little bit.

Anna is going round the bend with writer's block and keeps multiple concurrent notebooks whilst sleeping with a succession of increasingly dreadful men and agonising over whether to leave the communist party or not. Maybe it's an insightful document of its time but I was in WTF?! mode for most of it.

#sundaybuddyread @TheBookHippie

I'm so glad the library had this in audio: the memoir of queer, Muslim, drag queen Glamrou (with brief detours via marine biology and Eton), it felt only right to hear their story told in their own voice. It's courageous, moving, inspiring, and dark with flashes of humour.

This is what's great about reading: 45+ years with a book in my hand and still I get to be surprised by the paths they lead me along.

Oh, this book! 😍 Evolutionarily-accelerated spiders and octopuses in space, you say? Yes, and I loved it! It's exciting, wildly imaginative, and a proper thinky book to get the synapses firing. What more can you ask? A prominent neuro-divergent human character (Senkovi ❤️)? A third book in the series to look forward to? There's that, too. 🕷️🐙💫

I forgot to post this week's #libraryhaul
The top one is for book group. The other two are my own choosing. (We're not going to talk about the 20 or so books I currently have on hold. 🤐)