Welcome to Litsy!

This gives My Year of Rest and Relaxation & The New Me vibes - unlikeable and uncomfortable main character trying to critique how society engages with women. The food and supper club part is a very small part of the entire arc of the whole book and that was disappointing. The book instead is a lot about the relationships and assaults that happen from men to women, as well as listening to a lot of intrusive thoughts. Check trigger warnings.

I left this for a week or so to see if my interest would pick up, and it just…didn‘t. I found the characters either flat or downright dislikable, and there isn‘t really a plot to hang onto since it revolves completely around the MC. I did think some about WHY I didn‘t like it, and if it made me uncomfortable because of societal mores and women‘s “place”, but I don‘t think that was it. I just plain didn‘t care for it.

Lina was the first.

#FirstLineFridays @ShyBookOwl

I wasn‘t sure what to make of these heroines. At times I found them annoying, at others relatable. It reminded me of that invisible barrier 30 was between adulthood and Real Adulthood.

Roberta has felt invisible, especially since her rape in college. She meets Stevie and they form a deep and rapturous friendship. Together they find other women who feel unseen and create a supper club where they eat food, take up space, and transgress boundaries.

I listened to supper club in less than one day, I was such a big fan. It felt like it had more of a concept than the other ‘dysfunctional millennial woman‘ books I see it compared to. The way it spoke about food never felt forced or manufactured to make a point. An examination of women, food, appetite and space could easily have felt like a school politics essay but I never found it artificial.

Tried really hard to get into this one. Even after reading more than half the book, I had no clue about the protagonist or where the story was going. I could have continued but then the voice in my head said " life is too short to read a book you don't enjoy".

#audiochutneying ?
Spent today doing a re-read on audio of the tagged book for my zoom bookclub, whilst making mango and jalapeño chutney, all home grown!

My lovely friend @Tex2Flo left some mangoes on her doorstep for friends to pick up. And I‘ve been having success with my little pepper plant, keeping me in jalapeños during this quarantine!
So like an old-fashioned trading post, I‘ll be dropping off a jar on her doorstep very soon ????

Read on the left, in progress on the right. Enjoyed both my reads this week, as often happens they had lots of similarities - women ten years after graduating in unsatisfying jobs, with few friends and experiences from their past which are heavily impacting their relationships. The Brit (Supper Club) won it for me....
#bookreport
#weeklyforecast

Female appetite and desire are explored in quirky ways in this book and I love quirk!

Next up: book club pick!

⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2

This story held plenty of promise initially, female-relationship focused and tackling some serious issues of date rape and social anxiety, I was quite excited to see all the aspects come together and culminate in this anarchist Supper Club. But it is not really structured in a way that delivers the punch it I was hoping for. Tricky time shifts got in the way of seamless storytelling.

Plus :Bacchanalian feasting Minus: food wastage !

Strange book. Liked the depiction of women having really appetite and desire, but the protagonist seemed weak and easily manipulated and like she didn‘t know herself - even at the end

“You can read or you can throw my ball...” 🎾

I liked the idea and the overall sentiment of celebrating taking up space as women, but I think the plot surrounding it could have been much better.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ stars

#SupperClub #novel #LaraWilliams #holiday #read #review

An odd story, told with unflinching honesty and visceral detail, this novel has been called a female ‘Fight Club‘. A group of women gather secretly, indulging their appetites, eating and drinking to excess, dancing and screaming with abandon, and ‘taking up space‘. But for me, this is a story about young women, their friendships, the traumas and abuses that shape them, and of trying to find a place to feel grounded, supported, inspired and loved.

I‘ve had one of those weird days where the same topic keeps coming up!
I made a post about Emma Cline‘s ‘The Girls‘ this morning for #AyupAugust ..... then I got to work and was putting out some new releases and came across ‘Chaos‘.....
Then at lunch, I‘m reading my current (tagged book) and I‘m reading about these women who dumpster dive for food! .... which made me think of the Manson family, which took me right back to ‘The Girls‘!

#nextup on kindle......

To stave off loneliness in college, our narrator Roberta takes up cooking. But this isn't one of those sumptuous, charming foodie novels that has your mouth watering; instead, there was something a little gross, slightly dank, and funky about the food. There was an extreme focus on body that reminded me of Otessa Moshfegh and Siri Hustvedt; same with the myopic self focus of our main character.

Those evenings, sitting on the living-room floor, laptops to our sides and an array of paper scattered across the floor, drinking wine and listening to music, were suffused with a warmth like nothing else I'd ever felt. I thought of it as the same feeling people get when planning their wedding. It felt enormous and essential and transitory: this papier-mâché beast that we were trying to carve into form.

What a great idea @megnews 😊👍 .... I love this idea...💕📚
These are my #20booksby2020 that I really want to have finished by the end of the year....
A combination of Bookclub reads, BOTM, a few to finish up #booked2019 , exciting new releases, my library holds, and the pile on my nightstand!

One of my favorite covers of all time.

Coming hot off Three Women by Lisa Taddeo, I was HERE FOR THIS. I loved the premise: a supper club full of women who unapologetically eat and drink and indulge and take up space and gain weight and dance wildly. It got even deeper as we learn about these women, their traumas, and the sacred way women have of healing other women. I long for more of this open rebellion against being smaller in my own life.

Book line-up. #bookhaul #shoplocal #indie

I bailed. I tried twice to read it, just couldn't get into it.

Really enjoyed this funny, feminist novel about figuring out what it means to be a woman in a body in the world. Food, cooking, and eating factor into this process for the main character in many interesting ways. There‘s fumbling and trauma and complicated relationships, but also growing and empowerment and humor (all of which are captured in a great moment about asking for a sandwich that made me shout “Yesssss, girl!!” 😂). Book 3 of #24in48.