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Tonton

Tonton

Joined June 2016

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Tonton
4321 | Paul Auster
Leftcoastzen Will miss him. 6mo
19 likes1 comment
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Translation State | Ann Leckie
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Kairos: Roman | Jenny Erpenbeck
BarbaraBB One of only two I read so far! 8mo
Tonton I have to put them all on my TBR😅❣️ 8mo
15 likes2 comments
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Fingersmith | Sarah Waters
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Just re-read this after watching the Korean film adaptation ( The Handmaiden) of the book. Surprisingly faithful to the book and very lush, atmospheric, and erotic.

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Memory Police | Yoko Ogawa
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Scoop! Martin Scorsese and the author are executive producers for the American film version! Will star Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon.) should be awesome. Link: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/lily-gladstone-to-star-in-me...

25 likes1 stack add
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Tonton
Year of the Dragon | Robert Daley
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Happy New Year! It's the year of the dragon in the Asian calendar. Time to balance, and make good trouble.

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Pickpick

Stupendously glorious both in style, story, and characters! I was feeling so stressed by doom scrolling but this gave hope that individuals and community can make good trouble! We‘re in this together.

rockpools I love your review! This is exactly what we need right now. 9mo
Tonton @rockpools Thank you😎❣️ 9mo
26 likes1 stack add2 comments
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Pickpick

This book is on fire. For everyone who watches movies and TV: Brings clear analysis and reporting on issues (inclusivity, diversity, economics, wage gaps, privilege, creativity, AI) impacting not just Hollywood but society overall. This is why the strikes by the writers, directors, and actors this year are so important. Disclaimer: I‘m a freelancer on movie/series. Photo: on location, Kyoto.

22 likes1 stack add
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Prophet Song | Paul Lynch
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Booker prize winner! 🥇https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/nov/26/booker-prize-2023-prophet-song-paul-lynch-novel-wins?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

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I love dipping into the dictionary 😎❣️🌟

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10 episodes coming your way next February! Proud to have been a tiny cog in a huge production engine for the show, so hope you don‘t mind the shout out😎🌟❣️

LeahBergen Oh, cool! What did you do in the production? 11mo
Tonton @LeahBergen Japan based actors casting support 11mo
LeahBergen That‘s great! I‘m looking forward to watching it. 11mo
23 likes3 comments
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Thanksging TBR list, part 2❣️

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Time Shelter | Georgi Gospodinov
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Thanksgiving holiday TBR, part 1! Happy Turkey day, you all🌟

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Possession | A. S. Byatt
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AmyG 😪 12mo
28 likes1 comment
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RIP Louise Gluck

AmyG 😢 13mo
15 likes1 comment
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Fahrenheit 451 | Ray Bradbury
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For all the librarians under siege and all of us. Truffaut directing Fahrenheit 451.

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The October Country | Ray Bradbury
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My annual October read.

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Here‘s a list of French novels in translation for stacking!

https://francetoday.com/learn/books/read-like-the-french-11-french-best-sellers-...

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The Lies You Wrote | Brianna Labuskes
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Linguists! Translators, interpreters, transcribers have their detecting skills tested in this list. Used to work interpreting and translating so got the feels. Looking forward to reading😎. https://crimereads.com/crime-novels-brooke-robinson/

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Chain-Gang All-Stars | Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
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Every book in the long list added to my TBR!
Take a look: https://centerforfiction.org/book-recs/2023-first-novel-prize/

28 likes1 stack add
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Catfish Rolling | Clara Kumagai
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Pickpick

A bit apprehensive to start this YA; wouldn't have been able to bear a cliche ridden story, or cringe inducing over-explanation of Japanese words/customs as part of the narrative or, worse: footnotes. It took me over 24 hours to get home after the 3/11 earthquake/tsunami. This is an astounding, magical realist philosophical coming of age story set after the tragedy as Sora navigates friendship, love, grief, and time.

Tonton No apologies either for use of Japanese words when English can't convey the meaning. Assumption that you either know the word or you're capable of looking it up! (The glossary is for the descriptive terms for the seasons.) Japanese myth that Japan lies over a gigantic immobilized catfish-its struggles to move cause earthquakes. Poster is for an earthquake related exhibition at the National Science Museum.
1y
Reggie Very cool! 1y
21 likes2 comments
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Khtos, abo Vodjane Sertse | Viktorija Amelina
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RedCurly 🖤 1y
26 likes1 comment
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Siren Queen | Nghi Vo
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Pickpick

Delicious anticipation after reading the first couple of pages so set myself up with drinks, snacks, and dove into old time Hollywood where a young queer Chinese woman falls accidentally into acting and a studio contract. Studios were fiefdoms back then, and this vision of supernatural Hollywood has demon studio heads, real consequences for failure; where stardom means immortality and power retreats when faced with acting artistry.

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Translation State | Ann Leckie
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Pickpick

Anything Ann Leckie writes, I read! So much to pay attention to: intricate interstellar politics, internecine conflict, and shaking up of assumptions of identity. I confess sometimes I start with an idea of who/what a character presents as only to keep revising until it really doesn‘t matter in the end: Leckie is a master of making you care about the person-AI, human, alien, or bot-until the current IRL gender issues are seen as BS f—kery!

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Yellowface | Rebecca F. Kuang
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Been away from Litsy due to spurts of work and catching up on TBR and rainy season ennui. Still stacked is the tagged book. Here is link to a wonderful conversation (video) between R.F. Kuang and Roxanne Gay. Enjoy! https://youtu.be/IWUZtEAByaQ

Suet624 Nice to see you again! 1y
Tonton @Suet624 so good to be back🌟 1y
BarbaraBB 👋🏽 1y
Tonton @BarbaraBB 😎👍 1y
29 likes4 comments
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Don't Know Tough | Eli Cranor
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Well deserved win for Edgar Awards Best First Novel!

Here is the full list of winners: https://crimereads.com/mwa-announces-the-2023-edgar-award-winners/

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Pickpick

Our oceans are in dire peril. This is a timely mashup of real science, oceanic changes, AI, Tibetan monk clones, massive and evil mega corporations, exiled islanders, and a robot too human for their own good partnered with a marine biologist hoping to discover how to communicate with the alien, fierce intelligence of the octopus- brains in 8 legs and a briefest of lifespans dying after making sure their eggs hatch. What‘s consciousness?

Tonton Food for thought and I find I can‘t eat octopus anymore. 2y
Lindy This book sounds good! I was at an Italian restaurant on Saturday and was shocked to hear that the daily special was octopus. I had honestly forgotten that some people eat octopus. 2y
Tonton @Lindy Japanese half: used to eat octopus sashimi and sushi; Italian half: broiled with lemon and olive oil. Now never. 2y
Lindy @Tonton 🐙❤️ 2y
33 likes1 stack add4 comments
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Tonton
Our Missing Hearts | Celeste Ng
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Pickpick

Ng takes the zeitgeist now and gives it a little push to give us an authoritarian America that‘s a nightmare of fascist racism, control (through separating children from families, book banning) and fear. Bird‘s Chinese mother (a banned poet) went underground to protect the family. One day he finds a message and runs away to find her. Art and poetry as a means of political revolution; heartbreak and hope. Antifa librarians rule🌟❣️

sarahbarnes Great review! 2y
Suet624 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 2y
Tonton @sarahbarnes, @Suet624 Thanks❣️🌟😎 2y
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Lindy Yes, I felt the same about this story being scarily close to our current zeitgeist, and encouraged by the message of revolutionary possibilities of art. It led me to read 2y
Tonton @Lindy By Havel! Thank you, will read! 2y
Lindy @Tonton 👍 2y
29 likes6 comments
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The Builders | Daniel Polansky
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Pickpick

Imagine Yul Brynner or Toshiro Mifune as a mouse! This over the top anthropomorphic running in joke/pastiche is a homage to The Magnificent Seven (itself a homage to Akira Kurosawa‘s Seven Samurai.) Don‘t think, just enjoy it. Woo hoo ❣️

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Poetry collection illuminating the state of America. The poem (in comments below) is titled Searchers, about the dogs trained to find survivors in the rubble of the World Trade Center. Handlers had to find volunteers to pretend to survivors as the dogs felt they had failed.

Tonton Searchers
We gave our dogs a button to sniff,
or a tissue, and they bounded off
confident in their training,
in the power of their senses
to re-create the body,

but after eighteen hours in rubble
where even steel was pulverized
they curled on themselves
and stared up at us
and in their soft huge eyes
we saw mirrored the longing for death:
2y
Tonton
then we had to beg a stranger
to be a victim and crouch
behind a girder, and let the dogs
discover him and tug him
proudly, with suppressed yaps,
back to Command and the rows
of empty triage tables.

But who will hide from us?
Who will keep digging for us
here in the cloud of ashes?
2y
23 likes2 comments
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DivineDiana What a great photograph! 2y
33 likes1 comment
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The Sympathizer | Viet Thanh Nguyen

Update on the HBO production: teaser trailer and Robert Downey playing four roles.

https://deadline.com/2023/04/the-sympathizer-trailer-robert-downey-jr-four-chara...

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Night Boat to Tangier | Kevin Barry
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Cathythoughts My husband just read this and LOVED it. Thanks for sharing about the film, I must tell him 👍🏻😁 2y
Tonton @Cathythoughts 👍🌟❣️ 2y
31 likes1 stack add2 comments
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Tonton
Cursed Bunny | Bora Chung
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Pickpick

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. Amazing collection of genre mashup short stories: magic realism and horror focused on powerlessness of women in the patriarchy, male power and moral corruption. The title story is about a lamp shaped as a rabbit; it causes the downfall of a greedy and corrupt business and family. Slow motion disaster you can‘t look away from, and genuinely scary. Time for a bite of chocolate Easter bunny!

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Last Call | Tim Powers
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Pickpick

This is as fabulous as I remembered as when first read! Lost Fisher King, lots of T.S. Eliot, poker played with Tarot cards, ancient archetypes, and a battle for souls set in Las Vegas, a kingdom in the desert created by mobster Bugsy Siegel. In March of 1951, testifying before a Senate Crime Committee, Virginia Hill stated that Siegel had told her the Flamingo Hotel was upside down-though she was able to cast no light on what he might have meant.

Tonton And the action takes place leading up to and over Easter! 2y
25 likes1 comment
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Hamnet | MAGGIE. O'FARRELL
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Here‘s the short list for the Carole Shields Awards and glad to see one of my favorites -tagged- is on the list!

https://lithub.com/here-is-the-shortlist-for-the-2023-carol-shields-prize/

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The Half Life of Valery K | Natasha Pulley
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Unexpected joy today as half forgotten preorder arrives! Starting this tonight❣️🌟❣️

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The Silent Cry | Kenzaburo Oe
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batsy A lovely and melancholy image. I'm ashamed that I've put off reading him for so long. 2y
AmyG 😢 2y
Leftcoastzen 😢 2y
BarbaraBB Beautiful image 🤍 2y
23 likes4 comments
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Dr. No | Percival Everett
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BarbaraBB How cool that Dr No has won! Everett deserved to win a prize! I just started another of his books 2y
SamAnne Planning to start The Trees this week! 2y
Tonton @BarbaraBB I love his work!🌟 (edited) 2y
Tonton @SamAnne 👍🌟 2y
BarbaraBB Me too! 2y
32 likes5 comments
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Bryant & May: Peculiar London | Christopher Fowler
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Such sad news. One of my favorite authors, RIP Christopher Fowler. Reading his latest London Bridge is Falling Down and Peculiar London. A copywriter when younger; he came up with the brilliant “ In space, no one can hear you scream” for Alien. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/03/bryant-may-novelist-christopher-fo...

batsy Oh no. I've been meaning to read this series. I read the article and his final words on his blog 💔 2y
Aimeesue Oh no! I love Bryant & May. ☹️ 2y
29 likes2 comments
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Acting Class | Nick Drnaso
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Finalists for the PEN Literary Awards, so many choices to add to TBR list! Winners to be announced 3/2🌟 https://pen.org/literary-awards/announcing-the-2023-pen-america-literary-awards-...

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Here‘s a link to read one of the stories in this boo, from the Guardian; enjoy!

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/25/widows-by-margaret-atwood-read-the...

Suet624 Thank you! 2y
Tonton @Suet624 🌟👍❣️ 2y
24 likes2 comments
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Olga Dies Dreaming | Xochitl Gonzalez
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Bookwomble I love this photo ❤️ 2y
Tonton @Bookwomble 👩🏻‍🎤 2y
33 likes2 comments
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Dr. No | Percival Everett
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rockpools Now *that‘s* an interesting list! 2y
28 likes2 comments
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The City We Became | N.K. Jemisin
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