Welcome to Litsy!

Got these from the Book Swap after going to the doctors on Monday. I wasn‘t so sick I couldn‘t walk that extra bit. Ha! Bottom book is for the evil step children, top two books are for me and my partner for a giggle. There are real people in the graphic pictures and there is so much hair everywhere! I just couldn‘t leave them behind. Middle two I‘ve never heard of but they sounded interesting.

#FallTreasures Day 16: Some of my #ThriftStoreFind while I was at Green Apple in San Francisco a few months backZ they look gorgeous, don‘t they?

Berlin‘s stories are filled with the stuff of life.More strife than beauty, yet lines that glitter like fireflies.She raised her kids with & without wayward husbands & boyfriends .Often holding the most menial jobs to make ends meet.Often fighting illness & alcoholism.She lived in many places , her writing brings them to life . So unfortunate she had limited success in her lifetime.She shows w/ incredible talent what a short story can do!

I‘m about half way through this , I‘m sure I will finish before the end of the year. She is a great short story writer who had a pretty tough life.So far not the gut punch to me like the first one ,A Manual for Cleaning Women.Only when reading Raymond Carver did I get such a reaction to short stories.Credit where credit is due , Black Sparrow Press had published her stories before FSG/Picador republished them.

I have been having a run of bad luck with the titles I have been reading later. Nothing terrible, but nothin that really grabs me either. I need something I know I will like. And I have been saving this little beauty for just such an occasion.

-"Lost in the Louvre"

My advice to all the women in this collection: DUMP HIM.

"How come aristocratic Englishwomen and upper-class American women all have names like Pookie and Muffin?"
-"The Wives"

"Hope was sitting on the curb at the corner, her hair like a black bucket over her head."
-"The Musical Vanity Boxes"
Today in odd similes.

4/5🌟 An Enthralling Collection!
Through hardships her voice remains strong and humorous and real. In these stories there are characters that are real and relatable. Struggling with marriage and motherhood and the ups and downs of life in a moving and identifiable way. She is a wonderful storyteller. Its too bad she couldn't have got more recognition for her talent while she was alive.
#bookreview #bookblog #shortstories #storycollection

Happy March break to those of us lucky enough to partake. These both recently came into my hands from the library.

Belated review, as I read this in December- but it‘s lovely. A Manual For Cleaning Women is still my favorite, but it was nice to read Lucia Berlin‘s words again.

Hanging out at Barnes & Noble today

'The first time I read her stories I felt inexplicably lonely, and then realised it was because I wanted to have already read them a dozen times. I wanted ti get to the point where we were companions, where i could open the book at any page and pick up a conversation that was already ongoing.'

Patricia Lockwood on Lucia Berlin. I've never read Berlin, but I'm very familiar with this specific kind of intense longing and loneliness.

With a looming pile of galleys, I knew it was time to do another round of book speed-dating. What were my first impressions and which books did I return to for a second date? It's all revealed in Episode 135 of the Reading Envy Podcast. https://tinyurl.com/ReadingEnvy135

Because Welcome Home, Berlin‘s (sort of) memoir was touted as a companion, I read these in tandem. Based on the information in Welcome Home, the stories in Evening in Paradise seem extremely auto-biographical. And, also appear to be chronological. But this presentation makes these stories less, rather than more, appealing to me. These felt more like reminiscences than honed short fiction writing. #netgalley