Welcome to Litsy!

My lunch breaks have been pretty busy recently, and I probably went about 2 weeks without reading at home, so I'm pretty happy with what I still got in last month. Lots of graphic novels during down time at work �

I read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy, so it is sometimes jarring to read a book that is so incredibly real and human. Senhor Jose works at the Central Registry, which records citizens birth and death. His side hobby is collecting records of famous people, but one day he finds the record of "an unknown woman" stuck to the back of a famous person's file. And so begins his quest to learn about her and break the mundanity of his bureaucratic existence.

November #bookspinbingo

My November #bookspin @TheAromaofBooks
#bookspin All the Names by Jose Saramago
#doublebookspin Being Heumann by Judith Heumann

Thanks for the tag, @BarbaraBB, and @alwaysbeenaloverofbooks for the meme! I don't give 5 🌟 ratings lightly, but here are a few of my #favs by European authors (in honor of Readingeurope2020)

🇵🇹 All the Names by Jose Saramago
🇫🇷 Jealosy by Alain Robbe-Grillet
🇨🇭 On Love by Alain de Botton

Id like to see @Billypar and @emilyhaldi list their favorites!

Essential Calvin & Hobbes, The
Lolita
I Heard the Owl Call My Name
Zorro
All the Names
Brothers Karamazov, The
East of Eden
Things They Carried, The
Hours, The

The #NameChallenge (especially for my long name of Elizabeth) looked rather fun, so I tagged myself!

I loved the atmosphere of Saramago's world: close, dark, hot and oppressive, and by turns cold, damp, dusty and lonely. He tells of the search for personal connection in an increasingly alienating world, of a breaking through of the self from an imposed and accepted conformity. If the liberation found by protagonist Sehnor José is a small one, it is nonetheless transformative. 5/5🌟

“Memory, which is very sensitive and hates to be found lacking, tends to fill in any gaps with its own spurious creations of reality, but more or less in line with the facts of which it has only a vague recollection, like what remains after the passing of a shadow.�

“Old photographs are very deceiving, they give us the illusion that we are alive in them, and it's not true, the person we are looking at no longer exists, and if that person could see us, he or she would not recognise him or herself in us, 'Who's that looking at me so sadly,' he or she would say.�

“Carrying a photograph of someone in your pocket is like carrying a little bit of their soul.�

I'm trying to find my nana's name amongst all those laid to rest here. It feels like a small churchyard, but it's bigger when you're looking for one stone amongst so many.

"- It's only because we live so sunk in ourselves that we don't notice that what is actually happening to us leaves intact, at every moment, what might happen to us
- Does that mean that what might happen is being constantly regenerated
- It's not only being regenerated, it's multiplying, you just have to compare the events of two consecutive days
- I never thought of it like that
- These are things known only to the angst-ridden."

I'm drawn to Saramago's authorial voice, the way he speaks directly to me as both a reader and an observer/participant in the story: "... therefore let us provisionally suspend judgement until other events, more enlightening, in both the good and the bad senses, draw us a definitive portrait." The 'us' made me smile, and put me in mind of Marc Bolan's lyrics to 'Spaceball Ricochet": ??

"- So you don't believe me
- No
- Why, if you don't mind my asking
- Because what you say doesn't fit with my reality and what doesn't fit with my reality doesn't exist"

This seems true on several levels ?

You know, there are some books you read and think, "Oh, *this* is good," and then there are the books you read and think, "Oh! This is *gooood*!"
I'm only on page 25, practically nothing has happened, and I'm already in love with Saramago's prose (honourable mention to Costa as the translator). Reminiscent of Borges and Kafka, with a bit of Mervyn Peake thrown in for good measure. Fingers crossed that the next 200-odd pages are as good ???

“The distribution of tasks amongst the various employees follows a simple rule, which is that the duty of the members of each category is to do as much work as they possibly can, so that only a small part of that work need be passed to the category above. This means the clerks are obliged to work without cease from morning to night, whereas senior clerks do so only now and then, the deputies very rarely, and the Registrar almost never.�

I've only read Saramago's memoir of childhood before, so this is my first foray into his fiction (unintended alliteration!), and I'm looking forward to it. The story involves a city registry archivist who (mis)uses his access to personal information to compile dossiers on celebrities. When he is struck by the details of an 'ordinary' dead woman, he decides to track her down, which sounds creepy, but I'm hoping it turns out otherwise.

Because I am an overachiever, I am using my full name ;-)

E - East of Eden
L - Lolita
I - I Heard the Owl Call My Name
Z - Zorro
A - All the Names
B - Brothers Karamazov, The
E - Essential Calvin and Hobbes, The
T - The Things They Carried
H - Hours, The

#booknames @ScorpioBookDreams

Don't be afraid, the darkness you're in is no greater than the darkness inside your own body, they are two darknesses separated by a skin, I bet you've never thought of that, you carry a darkness about with you all the time and that doesn't frighten you...my dear chap, you have to learn to live with the darkness outside just as you learned to live with the darkness inside

This week I am returning to one of my all time favourite authors, #josesaramago. I haven't read this book of his before, but I am a huge fan so far, and of all his work. #discoveringwritinglife #greatbooks #writinginspiration