Welcome to Litsy!

Here‘s my excellent #AuldLangSpine list, compliments of @Christine.

She said she was nervous about submitting so much nonfiction but that‘s part of what drew me in! It‘s been roughly a decade since I made my fated New Year‘s resolution to “read more nonfic.” Now, I reach for it naturally, no resolution required. There are a handful of fiction titles, too, which seem right up my alley.

Follow-up collage post to come (with my intended reads)!

Was slumping a bit so shopped my own shelves. This was great! My second Dermansky and I liked it at least as much as the first. I‘m still unsettled by the almost total lack of contractions (and Litsy confirms that I was whining about this with The Red Car, too! 😆). But I did just google it this time and learned a bit about why she doesn‘t use them, which soothed me. I did a hybrid read of this + the (excellent, full cast)
audio.

I enjoyed this one but I‘ll never remember the name of it. All of the characters are pining for a certain person who just isn‘t interested in them. Most of the characters are self-involved and selfish but I always wanted to know what was going to happen to them.

Wow, did I love this book. It was smart, funny and full of suburbia sizzle ! A perfect read to kick off September.
#FeaturesALoveTriangle #Booked2023 @BarbaraTheBibliophage
#ISpyBingo #LetterX #JustWordsOnCover #Adjective

You were so right about this book @BarbaraBB - it‘s such a fun read!

The characters are *all* completely unlikeable but in a hilarious over-the-top way. I thought the ending was a little bit too OTT for me but overall a fab book, especially for the first read of my holiday.

#AlphabetGame Letter V

This was really the right book at the right time: it was such a funny read and exactly what I needed when I read it, thanks to @Megabooks

This book was a super fast read for me. But I agree with the other reviewers that I did not like any of these characters.

The story of a bunch of nasty people, somehow interconnected, who put their own interests above all else, behaved terribly, & got themselves in messy situations. Even the gorgeous dog was not very likeable (she was disloyal). The choppy & bitting writing style took a little time to get used to but it turned out to be irresistible & strangely amusing. The climax where everyone showed up at the pool..it‘s crazy. Enjoyable, satirical, & humorous.

Entertaining with slightly disjointed prose reflected in the jacked up lives of every single character. A young, college prof without ambition, his 19-yr old directionless student, her selfish mother recently left by a pretty worthless husband, and a standard poodle spend a few summer weeks at a house in Connecticut. And it‘s a Clusterf*ck. What I find hard to reconcile is how I disliked each and every character yet still enjoyed the book. 3/5 ⭐️

#BookReport 24/20

I finished these three books. I flew through Very Nice and Dear Fang and then it took five days to finish Sharks. It was difficult getting into the story because of Hawaiian slang but in the end it was worth it for sure.

This is a perfect book for anyone who wants to escape reality in a really good and fast paced book. A girl has a one time thing with her professor who next turns up at her mothers house to stay there with them. I had such a good time reading this and had to laugh out loud at the scene with the three purple bathing suits. And the ending is the best!
#ATY2020

This was a fun read, however I don‘t know if the author ever used a contraction once. I listened to this on audio and it got distracting at times. Also, that ending.....

Not sure I loved the prose style (short, declarative sentences and dialogue that sounded very tinned), but I got drawn into the story of an unlikely (and lopsided) love triangle between a Pakistani professor who needs a place to stay, the former student he slept with, and her mother. The ending was off the rails though.

A tri-state Peyton Place, this novel brought the summer heat back to cold Kentucky.

Zahid is a celebrated writer that‘s in a pickle for housing and love and comes between a mother and daughter. Meanwhile, there‘s a larger web with dad, a pilot, overachieving twins, and Zahid‘s editor.

But all the plot lines are clear and weave seamlessly. This book has the best ending scene of any I‘ve read this year! 4.5⭐️

#ToB #ToBlonglist

Nope. DNF. The whiney first world characters got on my nerves. The writing was good but i just was too annoyed by the characters and their "problems"

Very Nice was a quick read for me. Entertaining, mostly light, but with some pretty unlikable (which I found to be realistic) characters. We have a family going through a separation with the college-age daughter caught in the middle. Readers meet others in their orbit and some semi-weirdness ensues. Pick from me!

Imagine if TV show ‘The Affair‘ and Delia Ephron‘s ‘Siracusa‘ had a baby, with more diverse characters (and no murder!) These characters are not ‘Very Nice‘, in fact they are mostly downright awful, but I enjoyed this sharp, satirical, biting novel. Each POV was so full of self-delusion, self-righteousness and self-soothing of their own ego, yet I couldn‘t stop reading. It felt super current, and it was really a lot of fun. Odd ending though.🤷‍♀️

I am giving this a so-so because it was interesting enough to breeze through but also what the hell — this is a very weird book and the ending is very soap operaesque. Not great writing, lots of cliches.

Update for my #20booksby2020
5 read, 3 in progress....all great reads so far 😊📚💕

#nextup A new library hold just became available...

Litsy is currently at a 0% rating 😳, and Roxanne Gay gave it a rare 5⭐️ on Goodreads! So I‘m interested to see where I fall....🤷‍♀️
It sounds totally my jam, so I‘m feeling optimistic! 😊

Honestly... wtf even is this book? It‘s like the author threw every literary fiction cliche into a blender, poured the resulting word slurry onto the page and called it a day.

I almost started to think it was a parody of literary fiction novels, but ultimately it‘s not smart enough to pull off that con job.

#24in48 @24in48 I‘m actually about 2 hours further than this photo indicates, but this pic is better than the one I took of my stopping point.

Interesting premise, some unique characters, but in the end it wasn‘t for me and I had a hard time finishing the book. I really wanted to like it, but I didn‘t enjoy it and I really can‘t say why I didn‘t.