Welcome to Litsy!

Set in a small town in the Mojave desert, Driss, is found dead at the side of the road. Was it a hate crime? Told from alternating perspectives the story winds back and forth, touching on Driss‘ life, but also his family and neighbours, whilst also trying to discover the cause of his death. For me, this was about grief, combined with small town tensions. The whodunnit element I felt was less successful for me. Overall though, I enjoyed it.

“The present could never be untethered from the past, you couldn't understand one without the other.”
#LiteraryLadiesBookClub

This is a tragic immigrant story but also about how well can you really know another person. There‘s a little mystery, some romance, and some introspection.

#Booked2022 - Author born in Africa
#Pantone2022 - #SpunSugar

I moved to a new village in December. Trying to meet new people is hard at the moment, but last night I joined my library‘s english bookclub... over Skype! 😆 We discussed The Other Americans and it was very interesting to talk about this book with people from very different backgrounds.

It was my #Litsyversary yesterday! 3 years! Oh how times have changed...

Here‘s my #bookreport and #weeklyforecast I have finished The Burning Land and made a dent into The Other Americans. I hope to finish that this week. I have also started The Grammar of Fantasy - a non-fiction book about how to make up stories for kids.

This book was fine--My interest was held for most of the book, but about halfway through I was just reading it to finish it. It is told from multiple viewpoints, but there were a few characters whose stories weren't developed enough and seemed unnecessary to the story. The book tried to address too many social issues but without the depth that they necessitated. ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5.

https://apple.news/AQAnY4ZS8Tw6QSSVU_IDKaA

I am thoroughly enjoying my first read of 2021. What a great start to the new year!

Nora returns home when her father dies, the victim of a hit and run. In this multiple-voice story, the mystery of his death unfolds as his family mourns and finds their way forward.

Books like this remind me of how much easier life could be if we assumed less about others, and actually bothered to communicate with each other in honest ways.

This audio was a really good distraction from my current week, which was less than stellar. A full cast narration upped the plot and writing. A small community in the Mojave, where a diverse group of characters find themselves sharing similar situations.

I‘m glad I stuck with this one...it‘s getting good. Multiple points of view/ part mystery/ part social commentary.

New listen 🎧I‘m all here for the multi cast narration

I enjoyed parts of this book and I liked some characters. It skips around quite a bit and leaves a lot unsaid. For the most part, that's great and I really dig it. I wish it has a few more chapters!

That makes #bookspin and #doublespin done early! @TheAromaofBooks

Got a few triggers here, but I'm steeling myself to be a bit braver in my literature.

Next up! #bookspin

Great on audiobook!! Read by a full cast. Highly recommend! #audiobook

Stop the presses! I‘m actually starting a book from my #weeklyforecast next up list! Everyone should probably go buy a lottery ticket because this is a one in a million occurrence. 😂

“Growing up in this town, I had long ago learned that the savagery of a man named Mohammed was rarely questioned, but his humanity always had to be proven.”

Written from at least 9 different perspectives, this story starts with a hit-and-run that kills Nora‘s father, an immigrant from Morocco. Part mystery, it also talks about the feeling of not belonging, how others see you vs how you see yourself, family expectations, & grief. Some may not like the addition of a romance. I wanted more about Nora‘s sister & the undocumented family. 3.5 ⭐️ (rounded up on GR) #readtheUSA2020 for California

I got distracted this week with my reading, & now I need to read the tagged before Monday for book club. Hopefully, I‘ll have enough time.

The Other Americans is an amazing book. Its about the craziness that is America and the way that all of our quirks, biases, experiences, cultures, and backgrounds can either interconnect us or splinter us. I found it for Read Harder (task 13, mystery with a victim that is not a woman) this year and books like this are one of the reasons I love doing that challenge. A full review is up on the blog today. ⠀

This was a beautiful and touching story about the way in which our lives are interwoven with people we may or may not know. How we build relationships with families, strangers and ourselves. The number of characters made me wonder if I should have listened to this as an audiobook.

Hey Litsy, do we have a calendar for all the events happening on litsy? Readathons, reading challenges? Swaps etc? I'd like to be able to participate but done always know what is happening when.

How do you find out about Litsy events?

I read this for Bookriot's 2020 Read Harder challenge. I chose this for: "A Mystery Where the Victim is not a Woman." It was not a book I had heard of before, and I'm so glad I tried it. I look forward to reading more of Laila Lalami.

Oooo #24B4Monday is this weekend woo hoo! Hopefully I'll get a lot of reading done this weekend!

So far on the Docket is:
The Other Americans -Book Club Read
Catch and Kill - Next Audiobook

#LoveReadAThons

Some books to kick off Bookriot's 2020 Read Harder challenge.

Wow the first 50 pages of this book are phenomenal! It was a delightful and intriguing start to the story, I am loving the numerous characters and imagine this would be a wonderful Audiobook.

A great audiobook! The immigrant experience and family are explored in this book. Watch out for this author. She is going places.

This book had lots of promise, and things I loved.....I liked the creation of the setting, both the strip mall and the desert were great and the cast of characters were interesting. However, the voices of the different characters as we shifted POV weren‘t distinct, their language, syntax and thought processes felt too homogenous and the book felt like it tried to cram in too many ‘issues‘ in a way that felt too contrived and predictable.

About once a week I get to go on a long train ride in an empty carriage ( I‘m going opposite way at commuter time!). I try to plan starting a new book on this day - it‘s becoming a little weekly ritual!

Uncle. Between the shifting perspectives of identical-sounding cliches and stereotypes, name-dropping of places in the region (how many times do we have to hear that someone's gone to Stater Brothers? Does no one shop at the Vons or the Grocery Outlet?), inaccuracies about the desert (e.g., turtle doves do not live in North America and Santa Anas happen in fall), and cringeingly trite language and cliched sex scenes, I just can't.

Lalami is trying to do a lot here, frankly too much. Islamaphobia, undocumented immigration, treatment of veterans, parental expectation, work/life balance, opioid abuse, gun rights, racism etc... are all brought up over the course of the narrative, but because there are so many issues to explore, none can be examined in any meaningful way. I get that she is going for “this is America now” but what‘s the point if we‘re only skimming the surface?

I need to read this one, as it takes place in the Mojave Desert, where I lived for a couple of years. Miss those date shakes
#NatBookFest

Really enjoyed this story, about the aftermath of a hit-and-run in a small California desert town. The victim is a Moroccan immigrant, and issues of identity come up for his family and others in town. I liked the subtle romance, the intersecting viewpoints, even the resolution of the mystery which was both surprising and not.

Beautiful, spare language; deeply drawn characters; a complicated, interesting story. Lalami‘s OTHER AMERICANS is a wonderful powerful novel.

A family of documented Moroccan immigrants experience a terrible loss. Their daughter Nora seeks justice. Along her path are new truths and old pains. Her friend Jeremy struggles with demons that followed him from service in Iraq. Efrain and Marisela (undocumented) struggle with risk, truth and morality.

The standard immigrants‘ children struggle with expectations story, with a crime and a romance thrown in as well. Set in Yucca Valley outside Joshua Tree NP, which is different, and Laramie nails the heat and empty spaces. I was frustrated that several storylines were just dropped and not resolved (I really hate that!), and a mid-identified bird.

Nora's father, a Moroccan immigrant and restaurant owner, is killed in a hit and ran. In the aftermath, Nora returns home to mourn her loss. Along the way, she confronts old enemies, encounters a new love, and struggles to keep her father's memory alive. This book made me incredibly homesick for my parents and a bit guilty for how our individual ambitions often lead us away from those who raised us. Told in alternating perspectives, a real gem.

This book has been in my physical TBR pile for several months. I picked it up after finishing a "just okay" read. I can already tell this one will be something special. It caught my attention from page 1. A really interesting portrayal of immigrants, class differences, cultural differences, and conflict.

The Other Americans is a story that covers way more than just the hit-and-run at the center of it. Everyday problems and life's struggles come to the forefront through characters struggling with PTSD, drug addiction, marriage problems, failing businesses, immigration, racism, societal changes, and more. At times I found it hard to keep track of the differing points of view, but I appreciated the overall message.

Laila Lalami's The Other Americans spirals from a central event: the death, in a hit-and-run accident, of Driss Guerraoui. Driss and his wife Maryam immigrated from Morocco when their eldest daughter was young; their younger daughter, Nora, is the protagonist, along with Jeremy, her friend from high school and a current police officer. They are, however, accompanied by dozens of other narrators as we see the accident and the history of Driss ⬇️

📷: wikimedia commons

A bit wild to read this novel, w/multi-character POVs, directly after reading There There, but it points up differences between a first novel & a novel by a more experienced writer. Lalami, author of The Moor‘s Account & Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, puts together a novel of grief and loss, with well-sketched characters from a variety of backgrounds creating a mix of points of view that merge to solve a hit and run ⬇️

So in May I discovered a random $25 Barnes & Noble gift card in my wallet.
Me: Hmmm, Normal People and the Other Americans are due back at the library and I won‘t have time to read them. I wonder if I have a Nook account?
*checks, resets password to account I haven‘t looked at for years, spends all the money on two new ebooks*
Now it‘s time to start this one for real!

The battle of the book covers, UK vs US.

I‘m sometimes in a dilemma as to which covers to choose. Here‘s the result of a poll done on Instagram by Electric Literature. It‘ll be interesting to see if your preferences are the same as the results. And more books to add to your TBR of course. 😁

https://electricliterature.com/the-battle-of-the-book-cover-u-k-versus-u-s/

#friyayintro by the legend @howjessreads
1. I finished four New Yorkers this week!!! Ahhh! 😃😮🥰
2. Heading into the movie Booksmart right now, probably going to a play tonight and another one tomorrow night, grading a LOT, reading four books (including ragged). Riding my 🚲. Cleaning!! Woo yeah. 😂

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain

1. Current reads are BLACK IS THE BODY; THE BIRD KING; and THE POISONED CITY (I have tagged two of them ... often ... in the past day 😂).
2. Next up is the tagged book, Laila Lalami‘s THE OTHER AMERICANS. Due 5/22!! Ahem.
3. Hunh. I go to a lot of movies? If you don‘t count all of the Marvel movies as book adaptations, then it was “If Beale Street Could Talk” in January. (That movie was ROBBED at the Oscars!)

”Always the anti-immigrant, wall wanters believing they were the first to arrive and claiming all, as theirs.”

“The present could never be untethered from the past, you couldn‘t understand one without the other.”

I really just couldn't get a hold of this book. It started off with one plot that branched out into a bunch of dead end tributary storylines that I didn't find useful at all. This book might be for someone else, but for me it was a DNF.

A man is killed in a hit and run and those in the community then tell their stories and his in this multi-narrator novel of human relationships. Lalami explores so many current topics while driving home the unknowability of a person. I found the book slightly remote in places but overall I enjoyed it.