Welcome to Litsy!

It‘s difficult to describe this incredible book. It defies everything; it is funny and heartbreaking; it is full of rage and hope. The characters and their stories sucked me in, told in brief snippets that made me laugh out loud or sit in silence in equal measure. This had been on my list for a long time and I‘m so glad I finally read it.

Poetic prose or verse novel? Some passages more poem like than others, as such, my reading comprehension ebbed and flowed.
The formatting is unique, but it does make the narrative feel disjointed.
If it was meant to expand my understanding, it partially succeeded.
I think the text vacillates between not being for me (white person), and being directed at white people specifically. 1/?

OMFG it's Fly Away Home shade! 🫢

Hope is the sound of trees. 😌

Still laughing at "bargoon". This was weird and funny and poetic, also very queer! Recommended in audiobook format! #QueerBooks #IndigenousBooks #NativeReads #LGBTQBooks

My #Bookspin list for May:

1. What is the What
2. How Much of Hills
3. Under the Undala Trees
4. Seeing Ghosts
5. Seven
6. New Jim Crow
7. Soldier Boy
8. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments
9. A Long Way Gone
10. Disruption
11. The Innocents
12. The Mountains Sing
13. The Prophets
14. Follow Those Zebras
15. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
16. H is for Hawk
17. Unreconciled
18. The Underground Railroad
19. The Night Tiger
20. American Spy

This one is hard to describe: beautiful and powerful, but definitely poetic and non-linear. The characters are a mix of people and animals representing different bodily and emotional characteristics, and shift between poetic reflection and description of concrete experiences as they try to connect with the natural world in my very built-up home city of Tkaronto.

[Wild goose] Mandanimakuk‘s responsibility is to observe the function of the system as a whole, to take note of inconsistencies and weaknesses, to watch how the system generates and uses energy...Sure, the formation is made up of individuals, and individuals are formations in and of themselves but that is the trick, to not get caught up in one‘s own body, one‘s own experience, one‘s own cycling head. Synergy matters because it is incomprehensible.

Ceremony strengthens the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for emotional regulation and empathy. Ceremony is not just one big dumping ground of sharing circle. It is not a performance. It is not even necessarily designed to make you feel better. It is exercise. The repetitive meditative nature, the long hours, continually bringing wandering distracted minds back into the present strengthens the prefrontal cortex.

Ninaatig also keeps a mason jar of soil in their shopping cart, for the times when they are surrounded by concrete and can‘t find any. It is not enough to provide nutrients, but it is enough to provide emotional comfort, which is a fact too complex for “The Hidden Life of Trees.”

https://youtu.be/pa5TrJZO0bI

High Lonesome: Selected Stories, 1966-2006 by Joyce Carol Oates

The Pain Tree by Olive Senior

Clea by Lawrence Durrell

Company in the Evening by Ursula Orange

The Other Woman by Grace Ogot

Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by  Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
...

#wondrouswednesday (okay, I know it‘s Thursday already, but I don‘t usually participate in these things)

1. Noopiming (I reread my fave of 2020)
2. And Miles to Go Before I Sleep by Jocelyne Saucier
3. Sour cherry harvest from my garden

Tagging: @PhyllisH

I‘m so happy to see that two books I thought should have made the Giller list (and didn‘t) are being considered for the GGs: Lisa Robertson‘s Baudelaire Fractal and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson‘s Noopiming.

https://ggbooks.ca/?fbclid=IwAR30sRb4BgROafNK53sjfZ4lcjqq9SAOKOQ7X2SVY6E4QJYj-BM...

This is an audacious, fantastic, & completely unsettling book that everyone should read! The author has a singular voice that tells a wholly unique story in both prose and poetry. It took me a few pages to love this style, but by page 30 she had me!!! Such a refreshing and unexpected ride! If I could give it six stars, I‘d ask for seven! Thanks to @Lindy for writing the review that pointed me in this direction! #AxeTheStacks

On my blog, my approach to reading challenges: https://lindypratch.blogspot.com/2021/01/reading-challenges.html?m=1

It just so happened to be available as a skip the line hold yesterday from the library, and I remembered @Lindy loved it so much. A great way to kick off my 2021 reading

I'm tagging my top read of 2020 and linking to my 2020 reading stats blog post... for those of you who like pie charts.
https://lindypratch.blogspot.com/2020/12/2020-year-end-reading-stats.html

21: Disfigured (Amanda Leduc)
22: You Will Love What You Have Killed (Lambert; translation by Winkler) published by Biblioasis; originally published by Héliotrope
23: When my sweetie‘s work is published in a literary magazine, she gets subscriptions, so there‘s always some around. I will pick Room and New Quarterly for this challenge
24: tagged (my favourite book of the year!), plus 20 others—I love reading Indigenous authors
#readharder

These are my favourite Canadian novels of 2020. #bestof2020

Leanne Betamosake Simpson was asked what she‘s been reading lately. (I always love hearing the answer to that.) She recommended Severance by Ling Ma. I second that!

A stunning, wise and funny experimental novel about the web of life. Full review on my blog: https://lindypratch.blogspot.com/2020/09/noopiming-by-leanne-betasamosake-simpso...
#Indigenous #LGBTQ #CanLit #shadowgiller

Esibanag moved back in & then learned all kinds of new shit like how to break zip ties & open the green bins & the new, extra-expensive green bins & how to do public relations. They learned to tilt their heads at the cameras to look omg so cute. They learned to parade out their babies in a line, ride the subway & steal donuts.
(Internet photo)

The geese fly overhead singing songs of encouragement in the sheer grace of a carefully angled formation designed to take them elsewhere.

(Internet photo)

On our way out, the mean post office lady yelled that Mindimooyenh could no longer just Scotch tape the correct amount of change to their letters and mail them, that they had to buy stamps like everyone else.

As if Mindimooyenh will ever buy stamps like everyone else.

(Internet image)

Akiwenzii says that old trees like Ninaatig can suck the sad out of you and heal you if you hug them. Heal you meaning take the edge off, I think.

I completely hope to see this on the Giller Longlist! I was captivated from the very beginning. It's wildly original with never a full page of text, sometimes just one sentence on the page, sometimes just one word and entire chapters of poetry. But the story is so compelling and just grabbed me from the get go.

#ShadowGiller #CanLit @Lindy

For example, these are pages 2 and 3 (1 was the same).

I've actually put this book on my Giller Prediction list so I'm going to start with this one. It's described as challenging the concept of a novel, and by just flipping through the pages I can see that it is quite experimental. Last year's winner, Reproduction, was similar so would they go with this style 2 years in a row?

@Lindy #ShadowGiller