Welcome to Litsy!

"We never get tired of lying to ourselves."

The best parts are when the text moves from the crime and into the relationships of the characters. Well-written and interesting ideas explored. Piecing all the information together is great and makes you an active participant in the creation of meaning. Great audiobook also.

The most interesting part of reading this memoir of a brutal rape is the way that the book reaches into your understanding. We don‘t just follow the rapist and the victim, we shine light on the rapist‘s family, Louis‘s childhood neighbors, and his family. Under that light is the stories of violence that they have all suffered through.
A magnificent autofiction essay on, well, you guessed it: [A] HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

Powerful, sad, intense, and so incredibly human. Edouard Louis‘s writing is a gift to us, even when he writes about the deepest pain. Emotionally difficult but exceptional.

Consider the title to be a trigger warning, if it isn‘t obvious. This book is a “nonfiction novel”, a term I hate. It‘s a memoir, as was his previous “nonfiction novel”. In this book, Louis explains, discussed, ruminates on, questions, and second guesses the events that occurred one Christmas Eve when he was raped and nearly killed by a man he had met hours before. This is well done but is not easy to read. #itsamemoir

#VoulezVous sounds French, but I can‘t be bothered to look up its meaning. So instead I present three French novels from my shelves 📚

#ABBAinAugust

What a complex, gut-punching book! In just a little over 200 pages, Louis tells the story of his sexual assault. He tells it in a way that shows the importance of having a narrative, and how other people‘s reactions can inflict pain in a different, but very hurtful, manner. A very sad read!

I‘m still waiting on my “ticket”, aka my next book from the library, so in the mean time I‘m going to enjoy all French bakeries have to offer! #BackpackEurope

After landing in France yesterday and taking the train to Paris, I immediately went out and bought a ton of croissants and started filling myself up with buttery pastry. That left me in no state to read, so I only managed two chapters of this short book. Today, I‘m trying to be more healthy with a smoothi bowl, which might give me the strenght I need to finish this 🤞

#BackpackEurope #BookandBreakfast

I took a glance at my TBR shelf and got incredibly stressed. Why? Because this pile of books all appeared in one single month (21!). How many books did I read this month? One.... one single book.
~
Side note is that my wallet is very thankful that most of these were free.

I spent the last few hours browsing books at an event for small, Danish publishing firms, and I came home with these three - the Danish translation of the tagged book, a book about a man with post partum depression, and a satire of our health obsessed society 📚

Seeing all the pretty books really makes my #bookheart beat a little faster ❤️

#Bookhaul #ReadingResolutions

I preferred his debut. The story in itself in Histoire de la violence is not uninteresting, but the narrative technique made me jump out of the story again and again. I just find it too hard to believe that a woman would sit and tell this story about her brother‘s assault in such ridiculous detail to her husband. What was the point of that? Why couldn‘t he just tell it all by himself? I‘m not sure the rating would be higher if he had though...

A couple of minutes of reading with no TV on or people talking. It‘s already a thing of the past.

I‘m conflicted these days. On the on hand, I have all these books I want to read, on the other I‘ve bought 6 sewing classes on Craftsy and want to spend all my time watching those... Are there any quilters here?