Welcome to Litsy!

Stories about relationships, words and communication and how important communication is for us humans.

I really enjoyed her short stories, maybe even more than her novel, the stories really brings out her quirkiness.

Tagged was my favorite of this month‘s books. I managed two Bingos which happen to form the first letter of my name.

So many awesome reads lines up for March, some of which arrived today in #blitsyswap

#bookspin #bookspinbingo #doublespin

Brilliant. The full power and humor of words are at Williams‘ command.

“Smote” was a favorite. I've come to appreciate queer writers who can thread an element of modern queer life into a story without messaging that LGBT+ individuals are first and foremost victims. When the female narrator of Smote performs mental gymnastics over whether or not to steal a kiss with her girlfriend in an art gallery, it's a story of humor, poignancy & humanity.

I adored this debut collection by Eley Williams, a lesbian author from Ireland. Her playful use of language delighted me from the start. I could sympathize with her introverted characters, struggling with how best to express ineffable feelings. There‘s a lively freshness to the prose that lifted my spirits, which is exactly what I needed right now. #LGBTQ
Thank you to Shawn for gifting me this book.

I wondered whether beetles ever suffer from insomnia, or think beetle-thoughts about huge bodies of water with something like gratefulness.

(Internet photo)

…and noticed that the newspaper‘s crossword was completed with a thick red marker pen; the clues had been ignored and instead every box was filled with the name ANNA ANNA ANNA ANNA both Across and Down.

there are earphones trailing from this man‘s neck and they squeak with chords that have the obtuse delicacy of a dove retching —

(Photo from Andrew Garn‘s The New York Pigeon)

Dandelion comes from the French dent-de-lion, lion‘s tooth.
I am not biding my time.
A lion would not baulk at kissing you, toothily. The French for dandelion is pissenlit. This translates, broadly, as wet the bed. I will wait.

Larousse dictionary‘s colophon is a woman blowing at a dandelion clock. Have I used the word colophon correctly? Where are you?

(Internet image)

I felt impervious and brave, wonderfully dunderheaded with love like the best of them and so many smiles started with you. I was idiot-beamy and bumble-gaited, could barely string a walk together let alone a sentence—I started waking up knowing that beneath the brickwork of my skin my heart had become built like a ziggurat. Our days were glossy and embossed.

I read in my research notes that Michelangelo once made a snowman. He sculpted it in a Florence courtyard for one of the Medici. Blank-faced and temporary, it must have melted into priceless gutters.

Rather wonderful! Arguably, some of the shorter pieces might be more accurately called situations rather than stories. On the other hand I appreciated the absence of gender-markers in many stories, leaving things open to reader interpretation. The collection as a whole is a word-nerd's dream! It focuses on the oddities and limitations of language in the minds and lives of verbally-compulsive characters. It's clever but playful. One to be re-read.

Full list of books read on vacation, part 1.

Several friends told me I'd love this collection and they were right! Williams takes such pleasure in wordplay (in a non annoying way) that these stories feel joyful somehow. My favorite was "Synaesthete, Would Like To Meet." There is also a thread of someone who left and the narrator trails through the stories speaking to the invisible "you," the way you do when everything you think relates to the person you have loved and lost. @shawnmooney

#Femmeuary #MtTbr This is a mere 169 pages of short stories but I had to read these so very slowly and carefully to get every image evoked by Eley Williams‘ language pictures. There is no superfluous word and she is playful and witty and erudite in her language- even when writing about a rat used as a mine detector in the desert with its human trainer the language is lush. A must read collection if you love language5⭐️ strong writing

#MtTbr Short story collection that plays with language in a beautifully inventive way. #Femmeuary

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This debut collection of short fiction out of the UK – on the longlist for the Republic of Consciousness literary prize – is freaking blowing my mind!

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Ahhhh this collection is so good. Williams' use of language is astonishing and some of those stories are among the most heartbreakingly romantic ones I've read. Highly recommend.