Welcome to Litsy!

This short novel is a disruption — in 1982 & now. It‘s about the sorrow of domestic life. It‘s about the way that people crave a “home” and how sometimes, despite your best efforts, you‘re never quite able to make one (or keep it).

At first, I thought reading Shark Heart in the same year as this would dull its novelty but it‘s a different beast (not just taxonomically but tonally). Too bleak to become a favorite but it feels poignant & memorable.

I didn't get much out of this story. The audio narration was... aloof? She did not really injection much emotion into the performance, so it felt like all the events in the story were happening to her and she was just going with it. Maybe it would have been better reading the text, but I wasn't engaged with the audio.

A suburban housewife starts an affair with a green frogman.
Is he real or just her imagination, her escape from a bleak reality in which she is mourning the death of her child and has become estranged from her husband?

I guess this is exactly what Rachel Ingall wants us to wonder about and maybe it doesn‘t really matter: she starts questioning her life and the world.

What an impressive novella. One that will stick with me. That ending…

#WeeklyForecast 19/24

I am still reading What‘s Left of me Is Yours, which is set in Japan and I am enjoying. I have another #womensprize book lined up, the one on the shortlist I hadn‘t read yet. Mrs Caliban I am going to read because of @vivastory ‘s review.

Thanks for the #ThreeListThursday #TLT tag @Eggs 🤗

This is hard to narrow down! It seems I like my stories & novellas on the creepy &/or weird side & the ones that come to mind are:

1️⃣ WHALITC is a classic for a reason 😱

2️⃣ Not enough hype for the tagged book. I found it in an early #AuldLangSpine (#NewYearWhoDis ) 🐸

3️⃣ Had to list both books from the Sworn Soldier series as I loved them both equally.🖤🖤

Anyone else want to share?

So weird!

Well that was uniquely disturbing and insightful. I'd definitely put this more in "suburbia and early decades of modern housewife-ry are/were hell (feels like 50's/60s, published in the 80s?) and universal human and animal rights should be a thing" than "weird little creature book." A lot of despair for 111 pages. Warning for mentions of SA.

This novella was so much sadder than I expected. Yes there is the oddity of a housewife starting an affair with a sea creature but there is also so much loss in her life. Dorothy‘s life is largely empty with her crumbling marriage and grief so it is not surprising that she would grasp happiness in any form. Dorothy has to explain her world to her new lover and in doing so realizes how much of it she doesn‘t understand herself. An interesting read.

I had to set this one aside a few times to read books for review but finished tonight. Strange but very good. Lonely, grieving for her son & her marriage crumbling, Dorothy hides a green amphibious man who has escaped the local ocean research lab. Larry brings some spark back to her life (along with a lot of🥑🥑🥑😉) I loved it except for the ending. Thanks to @ladyneverwhere who had it as part of her #NewYearWhoDis list for introducing me to it.

A depressed housewife has her desires fulfilled when a hulking fishman escapes from a laboratory and walks into her kitchen.

Unfortunately I couldn‘t emotionally follow this all the way to its dramatic end - I didn‘t know what I was meant to be feeling. But I loved its tender subversiveness, both in its upending of monster tropes and in its questioning of the unwritten rules of society, marriage, & gender. Brief, unique, feminist, worth a read.

@readordierachel That ending though!?! Why?!? 😔 She was quite naive about quite a few things, but still. I hate Estelle, by the way. 😠 😤

Ps. The audiobook was a bit monotone, so not the most entertaining and engaging audiobook on the market, but I think the tone fit the book.

👩 🐸
#YesiReads #audiobook

This novella is hard to describe. I'll try. A lonely, grieving housewife finds a frog man (? - for lack of a better description) in her kitchen. A relationship forms. Reminded me a little bit of The Shape of Water (the film). But there is a lot simmering inside this strange stew. All I know is it kept me compulsively turning pages, the last ~10 of which kinda floored me. Weird and good. 4⭐

My finished Mini Wonton Vegetable Soup is has great flavor & the mini wontons are fun to eat. It‘s a vegan soup with lots of veggies that I adapted from a Mark Bittman recipe. Link to recipe post👇🏻

Trying to get a bit more of this one read. It‘s short & good but I have 2 book reviews due this week & a bunch of books I am trying to read for January. 📚📚📚😬📚📚So many books, so little time!

Closing Sunday with peppermint bark ice cream & magic shell (I‘m eating my feelings about going back to work tomorrow) 🙁 and starting my first book for #NewYearWhoDis

I am excited about this one—it sounds quirky & I‘m happy it was one of my partner‘s favorites.
Thanks @ladyneverwhere 🤗

In an effort to pep myself out of a deep December reading slump, I‘m going to try to squeeze these three under-200-pagers in before the year‘s end.

We have a classic Japanese locked-room murder mystery, a repressed housewife‘s magical realism affair with a fishman, and a tale of a powerful young mage and his dark shadow - a reread, rare for me.

Wish me luck! I hope you all are having as lovely of a holiday season as is possible right now.

My #NewYearWhoDis list comes from @ladyneverwhere & I‘m going attempt at least 2 books in January. The tagged book sounds interesting & So You Want to Talk About Race has been on my #TBR stack for awhile. I also have The Widows of Malabar Hill on my Kindle which in my mind I must read before I start The Satapur Moonstone from the list as I just can‘t read series books out of order🤷🏻‍♀️so I‘ll attempt to get to those two & maybe Binti as well.📚

Very sad and wistful, and surreal at times.

#30JuneBooks @howjessreads Green books

I'm too lazy to pull all my green books for a picture so I saved my review of this green book for today.

Lonely housewife in what seems like a 50s time period hides an escaped frog like male humanoid and romance? ensues. Seems like it would be fun but really kinda boring. Written well before 'The shape of water' movie, maybe an inspiration?

This is genius. So sharp and wistful and clever and lonely all in just over 100 pages.

This is all the more poignant as we know that her son died young and she immediately miscarried her pregnancy after his death. 😭

Had a terrific time celebrating #indiebookstoreday at four great Chicago bookstores with @WhatDeeReads , @cdreincarnate and @atlasclouded plus another non litsy friend. Definitely going to binge read the top book on this pile, which I've tagged, tonight.

A witty and warm feminist novella that combines the bizarre with the mundane in a delightful way. Ingalls pushes the boundaries of genre by having a sentient sea creature show up at the door of an unhappy housewife. The tightly-controlled narrative goes on to explore our struggles with human failings. Sensual, bittersweet and absolutely astonishing. 💚

She wants to be a choreographer. She says she has an idea for a whole series of ballets based on the chemical combinations of molecules in action, or something like that.

(Photo—not photoshopped—of my niece Anna, who also enjoys creating choreography.)

I‘m so bummed about the election results in my province that I needed a book to calm my mind. It‘s working.

“Your instinct for romance is very powerful in your teens.”
“Romance, right. Romance and tragedy. Except, now that I‘m older, what I really go for is comedy. Even the international situation. My God, what a circus.”

40 pages in, I‘m getting strong The Shape of Water vibes from this novella, which predates the movie by over three decades.

I forget what I wanted to ask her, but I picked up a plate and started off for the kitchen. She‘d just switched on her coffee grinder—we could hear it from the table; I went through the swing door, and there was the coffee grinder screaming away empty, and there was Jeanie, spooning instant coffee into eight cups.

I'm trying to pick books by women, with a feminist storyline or strong female MC for the #NoFemmeber photochallenge.

#AmericanHorror

The tagged book is on my TBR.

@Billypar @Cinfhen
#YesFemmeberInNovember 😉

Short and strange and sad. "Love with the proper amphibian" indeed.

Getting around to the Blind Date With a Book I got a couple months ago and so far it's a weird little bite.

#July2018stats Ten books!
1 audiobook, 2 ebooks, 7 books
4 fiction (1 YA, 1 #romantsy, 1 children's classic)
6 Nonfiction (1 YA graphic, 2 memoir)

I read this on #Libby in one sitting. I wasn't sure what to expect. At first, I thought it would just be campy and ridiculous. It was actually pretty heartbreaking.

3.5🌟🌟🌟.💫A quirky tragic tale that I liked, but I‘m honestly not really sure I enjoyed as much as I hoped I would🤔. The author had a very brilliant approach w/this book, but certain gaps leave it just a tad bit lacking but nonetheless still brilliant in my opinion. I like when authors are able to capture the essence of an era, & this does exactly that. I definitely want to own this book & will probably read it again from time to time 🐸💚☺️🙃

This is not The Shape of Water, although the two works share the plot point of a woman falling in love with an intelligent sea-creature. This novel was a meditation on suburban life and marriage. It explored the motivations behind self-destructive behaviors and intimate relationships. The prose is clear and simple, and it contrasts with the complexity of the characters. I appreciated its purpose rather than loved the entire story.

The premise of this book sounds bizarre - a lonely, grieving housewife encounters a frogman-like creature and they become lovers. Real or imagined? Hard to say, but death follows her everywhere and it may just be a means to cope. The descriptions in this novella are often unexpected and fresh, and Ingalls has quite a way with dialogue. Sharp one-liners exist alongside beautifully-drawn details. An interesting story about grief and loneliness.

A simultaneously fun and poignant read! A must get if you loved The Shape of Water!
- @malloryomeara

If you are only going to consume one piece of art about a woman fucking a fish man, make it “Mrs. Caliban.”

Managed to finish Book 1 for #24in48!!

A woman falls in love with an amphibious alien-like creature. That‘s all I will say regarding the plot of this pretty awesome book. If you loved or are interested in the movie The Shape of Water—read this. If you want to know how in the world a woman can be in love with a creature from the sea—read this book. If you need an entertaining 128 page read for #24in48—read this book. ♥️

At 84 pages in ebook format, this barely qualifies as a novella, let alone a novel. However, in that short space, this story of a lonely housewife falling in love with a lizard man manages to be touching, humorous, and heartbreaking.

I haven't read it yet; it went straight to the TBR when I heard about it. As per the blurb, "a tender, clandestine" love affair between a seven-foot-tall lizard man and a woman.

#LoveNeedsNoDisguise #nuyear @TrishB @Cinfhen

After escaping a duo of sadistic scientists, Larry the sea monster shows up at the door of a lonely housewife named Dorothy and reinvigorates her mundane life. Is Larry real, or is he merely Dorothy's fantasy—the antithesis of her husband and her boring existence? This quirky and charming novella is also a biting work of social satire and feminist fiction, existing in the gap between reality and fantasy, grief and joy, acquiescence and agency.

? ATTN great new (old?) word alert ?! "Horripilation" is here and she's ready for her comeback. Need to describe how reading Trump's tweets make you feel? She's got you. Browsing Redfin and suddenly realizing you'll never be able to afford a house? Boom. Swiping through Tinder and see your ex? Honey, it is ON. "Horripilation" - Shantay, you stay.

Trying to pick books for #192019 can be hard - so many options for 1982 alone!

#192019challenge #birthdaychallenge

Quite a mix of books I've picked up this week. 'Mrs. Caliban' is oddly delightful - I've never read anything quite like it. Clever and imaginative, but surprisingly dark and affecting.