Welcome to Litsy!

Thank you so much @Smarkies for this beautiful #jolabokaflodswap package 😘 Everything is perfect and I'm so glad to get a book that's been on my TBR for so long! The book sleeve is gorgeous 💜

Merry Christmas and I hope you have a fabulous holiday.

And thank you @MaleficentBookDragon once again for organising. Merry Christmas! 🎄

I‘ll read anything Olivia Laing writes. This strange, lovely novel was deliciously, bewitchingly eccentric and touching. I read it over the course of one very rainy Saturday. I will read it again.

#BookReport 16/20

I actually had a good reading week. Maybe I am getting used a bit to the current situation. I am definitely less anxious than before. And the sun shines, which makes this more bearable too.

So I read the 4 books I planned to read. My Dark Vanessa and Late in the Day were this week‘s favorites.

I‘m not sure about this book. Sure, I read some great sentences and references to the 80s, the 90s, and current times with Trump and Brexit. But what was the point? I am not sure what Laing wanted with this book. And why Kathy Acker? I read her Blood and Guts in High School and maybe that should have warned me. Not for me.

#7covers7days #coverlove - Day 7 Thanks for the tag @merelybookish ! This was fun!

Some peaceful evening reading from my front stoop, enjoying the last bit of sun before it goes completely down. This book meditates brilliantly on a lot of current worldly anxieties so I'm in a contemplative mood.

"She missed Obama. Everyone missed Obama. She missed the sense of time as something serious and diminishing, she didn't like living in the permanent present of the id." -from "Crudo"

This book is a picture of life in the midst of, in the face of, our current reality. I think it might also be about realizing that we can refuse to let the things that are happening own us. But it acknowledges the ludicrousness of it all.
@readordierachel I agree that it was cathartic to read this book in many ways.

This book is intriguing so far. Including the way it casually weaves recent events into the story. “It was the week Obamacare was rolled back, everyone was talking about preexisting conditions. David was wearing a ski jacket zipped to the neck.”

This book was a short, quirky, delightful read. Part memoir woven into a biography of Kathy Acker (I said it was quirky) Crudo takes us through the anxieties of living through Trump's election and the climate breakdown in exquisite, raw and very relatable ways. I already want to read it again.

So, I liked this. I think. I liked the style, I liked the tone, I liked how it glanced off each topic like a pinball, periodically circling back to certain themes. There was a bit of catharsis in reading about the months right after Trump's election, about the fatigue of the every-day-is-somehow-worse-than-the-last-how-is-that-even-possible nature of his presidency. ⬇️

Inspiring and compelling, this is one of those books that make you ponder....
With wit, candor and sarcasm Twitter, Korea, sealife, gender and identity, tRump, nature and wildlife are discussed from Acker point of view through Laings lens.
I like this the more I ponder it...

Interesting ? Autobiographical

Lots of great reads in February … and I‘m way behind in reviewing them on Litsy. Meanwhile, I‘m preparing to leave Tuesday for a big trip, so reviewing might be left by the wayside. #Februarystats

A few books I may have accidentally purchased this weekend.... Thanks everyone for your great reviews of these books! I‘m excited to get to them! 😃

Hip, experimental stream-of-consciousness novels are a joy to read when they are like this one. Kinetic, gifted and stimulating. You are inside the mind of a quick-witted woman, anxious about her upcoming marriage, and maintaining her independent identity and also her search for equanimity amid the bleak world events of 2017. If you enjoy such writers as Sheila Heti, Rachel Cusk or Ali Smith, dive into this.

Kathy had always had unsatisfactory relationships and her current unsatisfactory relationship was with sleep. Sleep was a withholding lover. She lay there and waited for it, hot and itchy and uncertain.

(Painting is by my friend Gillian Willans. Her work is represented by Scott Gallery: https://www.scottgallery.com/artists/gillian-willans )

Her husband‘s sad eyes upset her but also infuriated her, she detested being responsible for anyone else‘s happiness. Like can‘t you just figure out what you need and get it? Why do you have to keep asking me. Kathy could share, but on her own terms. On the original question, is Kathy nice, it‘s looking like probably no.

“They don‘t know where the missiles are Kathy said in a woman‘s voice, which was inaudible in this and many other circumstances.”

Olivia Laing slips into her novel smart comments like this on power dynamics between men and women.

They were in a hotel of such monumental ugliness it seemed an achievement in its own right.

(Actual hotel website screencap, folks.)

There was a deer park outside, maybe 100 little deer with spots on their sides, exactly like Bambi except tick-infested & real, engaging in play antler-wrestling & trotting races & kneeling down to chew & all kinds of other extremely interesting & distinctive deer behaviour. Oaks too, an impeccable landscape that at once depended on & concealed all kinds of colonial atrocities, seemingly natural but totally false, ⬇️

She tries on her wedding dress. There is something about it that reminds her of a dinosaur, probably a stegosaurus, a sort of inutile frill, not that any frill was exactly utile, but this one was exceptionally pointless, like a dinosaur‘s spine. Well, there it was: she‘d marry in a dinosaur suit with uneven eyes.

No one Kathy actually liked had a stable gender identity, not really. Transitioning, she loved the word, with its sense of constant emergence and zero arrival.

Then the New England novelist made an astounding statement. He said that the only good novels were written by gay men and women, that they‘re streets—whole boulevards!—ahead. The gaiety was how he referred to the homosexual community, which suggested he didn‘t know many of them. However, Kathy agreed. What‘s the novel about if not getting fucked.

What a waste, what a crime, to wreck a world so abundantly full of different kinds of flowers. Kathy hated it, living at the end of the world, but then she couldn‘t help but find it interesting, watching people herself included compulsively foul their nest.

“What she really liked was lizards, not just their tiny dashing feet but the way they were exceptionally dry.”

Me too, Olivia Laing! 🙋‍♀️

(Internet photo)

Willa Cather, by which I mean I, was getting revolted. Willa, by which I mean I, had just ordered a cafe latte, she was feeling fancy, she read the first six pages of Crudo. Willa bailed. I mean I.

This short, experimental novel is a snapshot of a specific time period. It‘s 2017, in the midst of Brexit and Trump‘s presidency and the rise of fascism worldwide. Laing certainly succeeds in conveying the numbness and bemused surrealism of how bad things are, just a constant barrage of shit. But for the most part it just didn‘t work for me, with its stream-of-consciousness prose and strange narrative choices, the meaning of which was lost on me.

I think Olivia Laing‘s writing is really exciting. It‘s playful and powerful and you can see the influence of Kathy Acker, the (possible) subject of this novel, if she‘d lived to experience everything 2017 had to throw at us. I didn‘t love Crudo but it‘s a very good book.

At the risk of sounding old, I‘m not liking the recent spate of stream-of-consciousnesses novels. They make me feel like the author just threw up all over me. The style aside, this book gives some interesting commentary on the current state of the world and the urgency and helplessness a lot of people are feeling. 2.5⭐️

You have to relax and go with the stream of consciousness nature of this novel. It is very of this moment. I heard someone compare this to Mrs Dalloway. I am glad that I read it, I wonder how much will stick with me.

Saturday chores done. Now for some afternoon reading!!

Since I can‘t describe this book any better than the blurb, I‘m going with that.

A couple of months ago I read Laing‘s “The Lonely City” and that blew me away. This isn‘t that good, but again what will be?

This book is very of the moment, with references to things happening in 2017.

I will definitely read her back list.

Final time for #24B4Monday.

I read 180p in Les Miserables. I also started and finished the tagged book yesterday.

Really happy about my reading. Only wished I had time for more reading. Hopefully next time

#septemberroundup part 1/2!! 28 books finished this month. Been a weird month for me, unemployed for the first half and very busy with a new job for the second half (yay!). I read some very good but also quite disappointing books this month, standouts of this first half were Crudo and Song of Achilles, with Bone Clocks and Heat Wave as very honorable mentions.

Starting my fourth book for the #BookAWeekChallenge.

I‘ve just passed 7 hrs of reading for #24B4Monday and have already read more today than I did yesterday

Really outstandingly written. The characters were just perfectly done, not a word was boring or over-wrought. I normally don‘t like novels that try to fit large scale politics in with a personal story but this was just incredibly well done. Nothing ever felt forced, it just carried me through. Both very personal and very universal. I could have written down a quote from almost every page. So excited to see Olivia Laing tomorrow!

Only got two days to read Crudo before seeing Olivia Laing at Waterstones Tottenham Court Road! Anyone else going??

I got the ticket fairly last minute so I haven‘t actually read the book yet! I also have a job interview on Tuesday to prepare for so I‘m hoping to spend tomorrow in a cafe doing my interview prep and reading Crudo 🌺☺️🌺

Just looked down and realized that my cozy romper and blanket matches the book I just started. Coincidence?! 🤷🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

I‘ve my tbr ready for the #BookAWeek hosted by @TheReadingMermaid in September.

Since I‘m buddy reading the chunkster Les Miserables, I‘ve chosen thin books for this challenge. Hopefully I‘ll manage to read them over the weekends starting next weekend.

Except for the book in Norwegian, all of these were bought in London. I can‘t wait to read them all.

Home made pan con tomate and black coffee
Why doesn't the UK serve it more? Best breakfast ever!
Great food descriptions in Crudo so far nom nom
#bookandbreakfast

#netgalley

The form of this novel feels so fresh and I wanted to grab hold of it with both hands. But, ultimately, the style really got in the way of the story for me and I found it difficult to find a flow to reading this one. The form got in the way of substance for me.

But, ❤️ this cover!!!

#TBRTuesday

Here‘s what I‘ll be reading this week!

Did Olivia Laing just invent the "biographical pastiche"? In #Crudo, she cross-fades her bio with that of punk poet and feminist icon #KathyAcker, thus offering an equally innovative and disturbing look at our current state of affairs. This might well get nominated for the next #Goldsmiths or #WomensPrize.

Not sure I quite got the concept of this one but loved the writing and the main character