Welcome to Litsy!

Trying to pick a book for July

Desert .... it‘s where I live
Prickly pear ... especially in the form of cider or margarita
Gila Monster... javelinas are mean

#succulentSaturday
@ReadosaurusText @saguarosally

Typical Pollock fare - expertly written and plotted, unflinchingly violent, darkly comedic. I think I prefer The Devil All the Time to this, but not by much.

Trying to finish this one today if I can keep my eyes open. Got up at 5:00 to run a 15k in Tampa.

I enjoyed The Devil All The Time. Going to start this one today.

Oh, well, either way, the sooner he took care of their questions, the sooner he could get back to his music. He was right on the verge of finishing his first original composition, a slow, mournful piece in eight movements meant to capture the educator‘s dread of returning to the classroom after the bliss of the summer break. Tentatively titled “Might as Well Hang Myself,” he had been working on it off and on for the past several years.

One thing about Donald Ray Pollock is that he doesn't waste time easing the reader in gently.

How amazing is the bar of this juice stand?! #vietnam #hanoi

#TBRtemptation post 5! A dark, gritty novel gothic like O'Connor and McCarthy, with some Tarantino and Coen Bros. tossed in. Two families will collide horrifically in 1917: the farming Fiddler family of Ohio swindled out of their entire savings, and the farming Jewett family along the Georgia-Alabama border. You've gotta read it to believe it! #blameLitsy #blameMrBook 😎

Sometimes after a "&$@@&$@ day, only Donald Ray Pollock will do.

For @vivastory

Donald Ray Pollock will be in Saint Louis. The goal is to read this before the event.

Sunday bookmail is even better.

Someone recommended this to me and it's been sitting on my shelf for ages. Took it with me to the Gaithersburg Book Festival this weekend and am now wondering what took me so long to pick it up. It's *amazing*.

Bar...erm book night

Waiting room hell made slightly palatable with the help of a friendly book.

This has been my "early for an appointment" book this month. Delicious single serving chapters that fill 6 minutes of waiting time and leave me wanting so much more. I might have to bring this one indoors. If you're cold, they're cold.

Not as perfect as THE DEVIL ALL THE TIME but still pretty magical. I think if he'd cut a certain storyline, it would have flowed much smoother.

By turns dark, funny, terrifying, and unbearably suspenseful, THE HEAVENLY TABLE is a moving piece of fiction about the roles that kindness, cruelty, mercy, and chance play in shaping human ends. And the book doesn't discount faith, even in its darkest moments. A great novel.

At the 1/3 mark I almost bailed on this, every single character (and there are many) has a complicated and ridiculous backstory .. things drift into farcical territory. It was like reading a literary version of Tarantino's "Django Unchained" a film I loathed with the power of a thousand suns. Once that idea was in my head I was doomed which is a great shame when I enjoyed "The Devil All The Time" so much ?. Still, Pollock is an interesting writer

The changing face of the "To Be Read" this year cubbyhole

Birthday gift from Uncle BriBri. Looks awesome. Gritty yet literary.

Irreverent. Tawdry. Bawdy. Insulting. Crude. Rude. If you are easily insulted do NOT read the book. I adored this book! One of my best of the year.

The characters are described as hardscrabble. I used it yesterday to describe a family we saw at panera. It's not meant as a negative word. It comes with the respect of what it takes to survive against the odds.

Of course I'm behind...gotta catch up! Day 31. AUGUST WRAP UP #augustofpages #livelaughbooksaugust #serialtalesinaugust #challengebookamajig #augustwrapup

It's a good story as long as you aren't put off by outlaws, gunfights, blood, murder, whores, and one seriously pissed off chimpanzee.

4.75! I I wish it hadn't taken until 30-33% to pick up, and not until the 70-ish % mark to seriously hit the ground running. Now it's done, I don't want it to be over, I'm not ready. SO GOOD. Anything breathtaking and new? No. Still I answer, SO GOOD.

Thank you Net Galley.

4.75! I I wish it hadn't taken until 30-33% to pick up, and not until the 70-ish % mark to seriously hit the ground running. Now it's done, I don't want it to be over, I'm not ready. SO GOOD. Anything breathtaking and new? No. Still I answer, SO GOOD.

Thank you Net Galley.

Too many story lines made it difficult to follow and understand. Didn't have any redeeming characters either.

We had these shipped to our house from @Powells in Portland. This is just my stack - we *may* have lost our minds in the store. 😱

For the #24in48 my goal was to read for 12 hours. happy to have surpassed that by an extra hour! Last time I participated I read for 10, so yay for progress! 🎉

Starting my last book of the #24in48 . Thought my start/finish time was 12AM...who knows?? Let's see how far I can get, very tired.

Anyone read this yet? It's in my NetGalley + will be archived soon but for some reason I can't bring myself to just read it. I'm seeing mixed reviews. I'm TOTALLY okay with bleakness + brutality/depravity, just afraid of being bored I guess.

For a book with so much murder and mayhem, this is a surprisingly big-hearted book, with quite a few principal characters, all of whose stories intertwine, and all of whosever stories have endings, happy, tragic or otherwise. I hope Pollock has more to tell about Jasper Cone, the privy inspector.

I was skeptical at the "well endowed" sanitary inspector finding dead babies in latrines but he finally lost me with the effeminate, infertile bank teller.

"The biggest disappointment of his life so far had been, in fact, his life so far; and like so many other white do-nothings, luckless simpletons, and paranoid crackpots, he was convinced that somehow the black race was the root cause of all his miserable failures."

Just starting this ARC today and am soooo excited!

I love Donald Ray Pollack. This book has a revolving cast of characters, each more fucked up than the last.

Digging into this now. Nobody writes hillbillies making bad decisions better than DRP.

Just got this today. After Knockemstiff and The Devil All the Time, expectations are very high.

When you are number one on the library's waiting list and the book is available to download on pub day #bookjoy

Held off starting a book for the last ten days in anticipation of this arriving. So stoked.

Pre-ordered

The violence, the prescience, that baller cover.