Welcome to Litsy!

#rememberingjenny

Nothing better than Jenny‘s own review of this book above.

Well you inspired me to read something completely out of my wheelhouse again. It‘s DARK, drug addled and apocalyptic. It‘s also brilliant. Michelle Tea describes this world in the most unique and visceral ways. I loved it and hated it, was constantly surprised and engaged - and I‘ll be thinking about it forever. (TW: end of the world climate disaster!!)

In this semi-autobiographical (??) novel, Michelle is living her best queer writer life in late-90s San Francisco, drinking and doing drugs and sleeping around. She moves to LA just in time for the end of the world, the earth having been irreparably damaged by humans. Both melancholy and sometimes strangely hopeful, and with an unexpected cameo from Matt Dillon. You might think you don‘t need an apocalypse book right now, but you‘d be wrong.

evidence that people don‘t move to SF to have an ordinary life .Ms.Tea captures the wildness & weirdness of feminist lesbian culture in San Francisco in the late 90s.Her friends, lovers, watch dismayed as the dot.Com people make the rents go up & drive out the creatives who have bad jobs to pay cheap rent & experiment with drugs,sex,booze that fuels their art.When Michelle leaves for L.A.,the novel swings to dystopian collapse.A wild ride!😘

My social distancing on a Saturday night , some Kilt Lifter and some Tea!

Oops, I might have gone a little bit overboard at my library.

#libraryhaul #poetx #wolflight #blackwave #bearandnightingale #codenameverity #earthissinging #throneofthecrescentmoon #laurus

@BookishMarginalia thank you so much for the #cupidgoespostal gifts! You truly are a treasure of Litsy!

Picked this up in San Francisco a few years back and just started reading it. Strong queer feminist characters, gritty in its imagery and set in the Mission District of San Francisco. Loving it so far!

This book was all over the place, and that was a good thing. We follow our main character, Michelle, from San Francisco to LA as she experiences sex, drugs, alcohol, love, family, friends, Matt Dillon, and the end of the world. The writing is really good, the story is completely original, and the book was a fun ride.

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

#sfftbrchallenge book 4 finished. 😃

It‘s go time for #24in48 🙌🏻

Here my stack... I started The Magician‘s Lie earlier this week, but otherwise I have picked some #diversereads for this time around. I‘ve got Children of Blood and Bone on Kobo audio for when I can‘t sit and read.

Let‘s do this thing!

Some #waves from my tbr. 🌊 😃

#ReadingResolutions

This is just one square-iPhone-photo size part of one shelf on a tall 5-shelf bookcase that is completely full of books I haven‘t read yet, almost all of which are #BlameItOnLitsy acquisitions.

Dear Littens: If you look really close, many of you can probably identify one that you recommended here on Litsy or generously gifted to me in a swap. So basically, this is your fault. 😂

#ReadingResolutions

#FierceFeb #GoodMorningHeartache. I love it, because after Andy leaves, Michelle, barefoot, standing in her own vomit, as a self punishment, walks back up to her room, the vomit on the bottom of her feet picking up all the crap on the dirty floor she never bothers to clean, even a flyer for an upcoming benefit. Lol

I got about halfway through, and I‘m just not enjoying this. It seems very self-indulgent. There isn‘t much here but a lot of sex and drugs and some allusions to the world going bad. Just not enough here to keep me listening.

Up next on audiobook. #currentlyreading

#NuYear #weareglass

This was a strange book, but I doubt I‘ll soon forget the MC, Michelle. There are a number of themes running throughout this - drugs, alcohol, LGBTQ MC, apocalypse, LA, San Francisco - and it makes for an interesting experience.

I‘ll have a chai tea latte with oat milk with my book this morning. ☕️📚

Didn‘t get this one finished in 2017 (and wasn‘t sure it was for me) but after listening to @ReadingEnvy discuss it on a podcast, I decided to go back in!

So what started out as this unabashed, near the end of drug fueled, Bohemia, late 90‘s San Francisco, lesbian, tour de force, with a simple shift in place, from San Francisco to Los Angeles, turns into this apocalyptic, existential, masterpiece. There are so many characters in here. All beautiful, all human. Thanks @ReadingEnvy for this rec. I‘m so happy that this was my last book of 2017, to be left with such a beautiful reader‘s high.

This book is making my head hurt in the best possible way. I feel like people who write good books would read this and wished they could write a book like this. So good.

Monday morning after 6 days off work - wowza! I have completed my Morning Pages and am starting a new book. Yay! (Anyone else do Morning Pages?)

This book started out much like all of Michelle Tea's other writings - a zany queer, punk, autobiography - and then it turns into a bizarre apocalyptic story. It's intense and wild and a bit confusing at times. It didn't all work for me but I did quite enjoy it overall. #queerbooks

❤️

Radler and queer apocalypse reading on the dock! #queerbooks

Reading with a view earlier tonight 😍

After a terrifying lightning storm it has cleared up to a beautiful night at the cottage. Time to curl up in bed with my book. 📚💤

Reading on the cottage porch and watching the storm in this summer full of rain! ☔

Cottage reading #queerbooks

This resonates! 💗

Next up! #queerbooks

Riotous and delightful, Michelle Tea writes her ass off, immersing the reader in a gritty, thoroughly imaginative landscape--an apocalypse scenario that seems plausible.

An odd experience so far. I'm liking it, but it feels, for some reason, auditory. Like I'm listening to a friend--or more like an acquaintance--tell me this zany story, instead of reading the book like normal.

My immediate tbr and in progress. How do you guys like #libby so far? I'm still getting used to it but I wish I could see where I am in the queue for holds and the expiration date for loans. Also an option to return kindle books early- I can only figure out a way to do that on amazons website.

Okay, this baby can come any day now. I have all my reading material (plus kindle not pictured) ready.

At first I thought I was going to really dislike this book but I pushed through and ultimately ended up really liking it. The world is on its last legs as climate change, pollution, species extinction and more have moved past the post of no return. In the midst of everything, a young woman is struggling with addiction and trying to make meaning from her life.

Unlike anything I've read before.

I have a bookcase full of TBR books but can't settle on any I want to read right now. Perhaps I'm suffering from #infinitejestbuddyread hangover? I blame DFW.

I'm contemplating starting this next. Have you read it? What did you think?

#maybookflowers body of water

Wave counts, right?! I have literally no idea what this book is about - I get ARCs at my bookshop job and I just picked this one up because it looked interesting.

From a lesbian underground subculture in San Fran to an apocalyptic, dystopian crossroads in LA, this is most definitely one of the weirdest (but good!) books I've read in recent-ish memory 🤘🏽 #COMEONEILEEN

Orange things

Michelle picked up a bloated jug of wine, one meant for a large Italian family to sip over a Sunday dinner. She consumed the entirety of it. Each time she considered stopping- That's it, that was the last glass, time to go to bed- a feeling like heartbreak washed through her body. It was the saddest feeling in the world, of ending the drinking. You can drink again tomorrow, Michelle promised herself. Go to bed. But she couldn't.

Vigorous, generous, lusty prose - that alone is enough to charm me through the gritty alcoholism, promiscuous sex and - sure, why not - heroin too. Michelle is pretty much herself except in third person. Then, in the second part, she moves from San Francisco to LA and it gets even better - all meta and how-do-you-write-your-own-story. And then the apocalypse began.
#queerbooks #lgbtq

No longer bullied by his narcissistic overlord, he would proudly reject projects that dealt in stereotypes. No more Latina maids and gay hairdressers. The fat best friend would get the man unless the man in fact wanted another man.

Imagine, to stop worrying about money! Michelle was born into such anxiety, it had been her placenta, the water breaking between her mother's legs, dollars and coins scattered on the ground.

I Am Killing Roaches! Michelle hollered. With My Bare Hands! Michelle needed a witness. To both her bravery and the mundane horror of her life.

Maybe she could write a memoir under a pen name, a man's name, infuse it with all the molestation and tragedy found in a common female memoir, and bam! a best seller, maybe. She could write a novel about a girl pretending to be a guy in order to write a successful book. Or a girl pretending to be a guy pretending to be a girl to stir up a sensational literary scandal.

This was the terrible thing about fiction, Michelle could write about whatever she wanted. She could write about dinosaurs mating with unicorns in the lost city Atlantis and some fool would read it.

... tall, wiry stalks of echinacea, their purple petals peeled back in submission to the sun.

"What's the book even about?" Quinn asked. "If you've removed the main story."
Michelle wasn't sure. Couldn't a book just be about life? Me, My Alcoholism, I Think. The Nineties. Being Poor. The Feeling Of It All.

She liked to read books about alcoholism and personality disorders to assure herself that neither was a problem in her life. When she finished pretending to organize Self-Help she moved over to New Age and consoled herself with astrology books. Aquarians weren't really prone to addiction, that was more Scorpio's jam. Sagittarians could also get out of hand, Cuidado, Ziggy! Michelle felt better already.
[image: astrologyguru.tumblr.com]