Welcome to Litsy!

Finished my last May #roll100 book, Winesburg, Ohio, just in time!

While the openness & forthrightness of Anderson‘s writing was unique for its time, this was just a soft pick for me. I‘m not sure what‘s in the water in Winesburg, but I would definitely not stop for a rest in this town full of unhappy people 😬

My May #bookspinbingo board is complete as well! No bingos and DNF my #bookspin, but finally read a #doublespin during the right month!

#FlyHighJuly #TownInTheTitle
@Eggs

Shoutout to Public Domain Theater podcast, which read aloud his story “The Egg,” and introduced me to him. This collection has moments of revelation and honesty, esp concerning loneliness and the misunderstandings that arise from attempts to connect. It runs a bit long, and I think there are stories towards the end that can be skipped. There is a nostalgic Americana glow without painting over homophobia, mental illness, and sex.

Most boys have seasons of wishing they could die gloriously instead of just being grocery clerks and going on with their humdrum lives.

The story [...] is a very curious story. It is delicious, like the twisted little apples that grow in the orchards of Winesburg. [...] Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.

The world is on fire. Start your pieces in the paper that way. Just say in big letters ´The World Is On Fire.‘ That will make ´em look up.

I thought there were some really good little bits in this book, but overall I just didn‘t get it. It‘s actually a collection of short stories set in the same pre-WWI American town, broadly featuring the coming of age of a local boy reporter. I found the vast majority of the stories confusing and dare I say a bit pointless.

Alas, another #modernlibrarytop100 disappointment.

Stack of books I read in #2018. This isn‘t all of them, but the rest are either on my iPad, or have been returned to the library/people I borrowed from.

Christmas holiday officially starts today and this is the stack I‘m reading from (I don‘t expect to finish them all). Tagged book isn‘t pictured cuz it‘s on my iPad.

The wind is blowing, the sun‘s coming out, and of course that means the temperature is going down. Maybe, just maybe, it will snow a bit more in time for Christmas.

“I wanted to run away from everything but I wanted to run towards something too.”

I almost thought I didn‘t have a book with a #stateintitle, but then I remembered I just picked this one up a couple of days ago at a library sale. Yay me!
#ReadingResolutions

An essential part of any midwestern writer‘s nutritious breakfast, as seen on https://m.facebook.com/winesburg.org/

Most readers struggle with two chapters in “Winesburg, Ohio,” ‘The Book of the Grotesque,‘ and ‘Godliness.‘ This video will help you with ‘Godliness.‘
https://youtu.be/cYwgBmaZrnU

The perfect setting for starting a new book.

The other half of the 20th-Century Classics Authors table. @Andrew65 #LitsyLovesLibraries

Helen ran down a flight of stairs at the back of the house and into the garden. In the darkness she stopped and stood trembling. It seemed to her that the world was full of meaningless people saying words.

He had always thought of himself as a successful man, although nothing he had ever done had turned out successfully.

Love is like a wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black night…You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life. If you try to be definite and sure about it and live beneath the trees, where soft night winds blow, the long hot day of disappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed and make tender by kisses.

He wanted most of all the people of his own mind, people with whom he could really talk, people he could harangue and scold by the hour, servants, you see, to his fancy. Among these people he was always self-confident and bold. They might talk, to be sure, and even have opinions of their own, but always he talked last and best. He was like a writer busy among the figures of his brain, a kind of tiny blue-eyed king he was...

The beginning of the most materialistic age in the history of the world, when wars would be fought without patriotism, when men would forget God and only pay attention to moral standards, when the will to power would replace the will to serve and beauty would be well-nigh forgotten in the terrible headlong rush of mankind toward the acquiring of possessions...

As time passed and he grew to know people better, he began to think of himself as an extraordinary man, one set apart from his fellows. He wanted terribly to make his life a thing of great importance, and as he looked about at his fellow men and saw how like clods they lived it seemed to him that he could not bear to become also such a clod.

From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy.

Everyone knows of the talking artists. Throughout all of the known history of the world they have gathered in rooms and talked. They talk of art and are passionately,almost feverishly, in earnest about it. They think it matters much more than it does.

I wanted to run away from everything but I wanted to run towards something too. Don't you see, dear, how it was?

In youth there are always two forces fighting in people. The warm unthinking little animal struggles against the thing that reflects and remembers

Dare to be strong and courageous. That is the road. Venture anything. Be brave enough to dare to be loved. Be something more than man or woman. Be Tandy.

I am a lover and have not found my thing to love. That is a big point if you know enough to realize what I mean. It makes my destruction inevitable, you see. There are few who understand that.

On the trees are only a few gnarled apples that the pickers have rejected. They look like the knuckles of Doctor Reefy's hands. One nibbles at them and they are delicious. Into a little round place at the side of the apple has been gathered all its sweetness. One runs from tree to tree over the frosted ground picking the gnarled, twisted apples and filling his pockets with them. Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.

In that high place in the darkness the two oddly sensitive human atoms held each other tightly and waited. In the mind of each was the same thought. "I have come to this lonely place and here is this other," was the substance of the thing felt.

#litsyclassics #litsyclassicsmatches

@Jerdencon @Vbrrgirl @KellyK

Finishing this guy while I wait to board my flight from Paris with my last European espresso.

Just beautiful. People-watching in Winesburg, Ohio. It's somewhere between a novel and short stories, as George Willard, the young newspaper reporter and son of the proprietors of new Willard House hotel runs across the town residents. We get told of their lives, so many of them trying to fit in or find ... something. And the writing is beautiful!

Thank you @TrishB ! This was one of my SummerSanta gifts, and I love it!

Before such women as Louise can be understood and their lives made livable, much will have to be done. Thoughtful books will have to be written and thoughtful lives lived by people about them.

@TrishB Thank you so much! Your sleuthing skills are AWESOME! I opened Winesburg Ohio first, and gasped - I might have raved a tiny bit about Mink River, which was compared to this, but never expected to find a copy 😊. I've *so* wanted to read Ocean Vuong - and Grantchester just looks charming fun! Slightly worried by the booksleeve - have you got access to my Etsy browsing history? Pals at MI5?Or have I been drooling every time this pops up?

I can already tell Sherwood Anderson is going to leave me with such a big impression he might become one of my favourite writers #Ohio #CurrentlyReading #Classic

An oldie, but a goodie. A friend recommended this one to me and I've put it off many times. This is a group of related short stories about the people who live in a small town in Ohio. The writing in this book is just stunning. Hard to believe it was written so long ago.

#TBRTuesday

A larger list than usual because I have a few already in progress.

Love is like a wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black night,' he had said. 'You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life. If you try to be definite and sure about it and to live beneath the trees, where soft night winds blow, the long hot day of disappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed and made tender by kisses.

I am a lover and have not found my thing to love. That is a big point if you know enough to realize what I mean. It makes my destruction inevitable, you see. There are few who understand that.

And for fun, another #somethingforsept #mapsinbooks offering from a less widely read work of early 20th century American fiction. I'm going to double down and make it my pick for #Recommendsday. It's a short, beautiful novella of interconnected stories that take place in the titular town. Think Thornton Wilder's Our Town meets Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon River Anthology. A subtly poignant exploration of humanity's dormant (or active) grotesquery.

Not hard to see how this may have been scandalous back in 1919. It's so earthy and the townspeople of Winesburg are so sexual, that it feels modern and shocking all at once.

A great companion to the Spoon River Anthology. The story "The Untold Lie" is worth the price of admission all by itself.

One of my favorite short story collections. This book gives you a glimpse into the lives of characters who feel incredibly realistic. Their stories are sometimes dark, but always compelling.

Arranged my books by the year when I read them. So this looks like a neat 5-year bar graph of my reading (2011-2015). I will just have to imagine borrowed books stacked among these. Kudos if you can find my favorite book (see tag).

💚🍏

"Dare to be strong and courageous. That is the road. Venture anything. Be brave enough to dare to be loved. Be something more than man or woman. Be Tandy."