Speedboat | 
#SummerSpecial #boat This may have been the first NYRB book I read. I remember liking it, it frustrates some because it really doesn‘t have a plot.Very 1970s NYC , don‘t remember if there was a boat in it!😄
pickI think this book is probably really divisive. It has no traditional plot and is instead a series of observations and anecdotes about life in NYC as a young journalist in the 1970s. Some of the descriptions of her experiences are funny, others quite shocking, and most quite insightful. One of my favorites was her description of lawyers having found the strongest “or” in the English language in the phrase “well knew or should have known.”
pickThis is a classic, frenetic approach to writing so this is for those readers that enjoy quirky, non-linear storytelling with no clear direction. This is a series of commentaries, journals, essays jumping one thought to another like a stand-up comedy routine (and it does have plenty of humor) with adages and remarks woven in. Told through a fictional journalist named Jen Fain observing the world, this is a reflection of the real Renata Adler.
“Lyda was an exuberant, even a dramatic gardener. She would spend hours in her straw hat and gloves, bending over the soil. When somebody walked past her and her work, she was always holding up a lettuce or a bunch of radishes, with an air of resolute courage, as though she had shot them herself.”
Alright, #NYRBBookClub friends! Posting June nominations before I change my mind again 😏.
@vivastory @BarbaraBB @catebutler @daena @emilyhaldi @sprainedbrain @mklong @youneverarrived @LeahBergen @Leftcoastzen @Liz_M @merelybookish @GatheringBooks @readordierachel @saresmoore @sarahbarnes @sisilia @Reviewsbylola @Suet624 @batsy @Tanisha_A @Theaelizabet @Billypar
#NYRBBookClub @vivastory I really loved In A Lonely Place , SpeedBoat was kind of odd , New York in the seventies, liked it as well.I read The Unpossessed,by Tess Slesinger , a case could be made that it would be better known today if she hadn‘t teased and skewered intellectuals, politicos , performers and writers that may have praised it otherwise.It‘s on loan to a friend,so not in photo.Own more NYRBs still unread.
panThe longest 192 pages I have ever read. There's no story at all. Just a series of disjointed anecdotes about life in New York. There would be a paragraph on some journalistic assignment, then the next would talk about a party, abruptly cutting to something about an uncle who said something that one time in a restaurant and on and on Adler would drone. Maybe I'm too dumb to get it, but this was completely meaningless to me. A bit too experimental.
Not book related but it's a glorious spring morning today and I spotted this beauty while walking. Google tells me it's called the common Hoopoe. We call it Satut in kashmiri.
This was published in 1976 and it shows. She also referred to a gay man as "the homosexual" in an earlier passage.
I must have read a review of this somewhere because it‘s on my TBR. It has a cool cover and was an award winner in 1976. #everythingismovingsofast #timbittunes
I don't know if I should thank or shake my empty piggy bank at everyone who posted about the NYRB sale ... although I'm already planning what I'd like to buy during the next one!
so-soIf you like unusual or experimental narratives, this is a book for you. It‘s like she wrote the novel and then cut it apart and randomly glued pages or paragraphs back in. The structure is erratic, which was her intent, but I didn‘t like it. However, it gets a so-so from me because the writing is amazing. So many sentences that make you stop appreciate the skill of what you just read.
When you get a gift certificate at the end of a long week, having finished a months long project...you tend to go a little nutty. I've only read one of these (King), and I am excited to read the rest! Thinking of reading the Adler first...any thoughts? #readwomen
bailedSome quirkily brilliant paragraphs and set pieces here and there, amidst other bits that must have been written under the influence of some pretty strong substances. There's no novel here, though; not in any sense that has meaning or value to me. Ultimately, a third of the way in, I'd had enough.
(Pssst - don't tell anyone but Renata Adler is still alive. God willing, she turns 80 on October 19th...)
Jeepers
This book has a 0% rating on Litsy currently. Lol
I expect I'll like it better than that, but I can see where the hatred comes from. Composed so far of paragraph- or at most page-long stories and anecdotes that at first blush appear utterly unrelated, most of them are intriguing in and of themselves. And then some, like this one, just make my head hurt.
OMG, according to Google this was actually a thing!
That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.
"It's not so bad," the professor said. "It only isn't wonderful. Nobody has an obligation to be wonderful."
