Welcome to Litsy!

I bet this is going to be a slog but I‘ll give it a try.

Something new I‘m trying, doodling while reading.

First of all: PEONIES

Secondly: book review. I‘ve spent most of November reading this Very Slowly. It‘s a look at a group of left wing intellectuals in post war France. Alternating chapters are spent with Henri or Anne. Henry‘s chapters are concerned with the personal versus the political - the life of the artist versus the life of the activist. And his love affairs which I won‘t go into! Cont ⬇️

“The knack of presenting one-sided views in a convincing, authoritative manner had become an art”

This quote is talking about the European press pre World War 2. The more things change the more they stay the same 😔

This is a very quotable book and I‘m loving it. @batsy just noticed scrolling through this book‘s posts that you‘d put this in a list of #7faves years ago. 😍

"At one time, he had enjoyed the pleasures of comradeship, teamwork. But that was in another age, in another world. Today, as things were, he was just as well off being severely alone; that way he had nothing to lose. Nothing much to gain either, but on this earth who ever gains anything?"

'"Oh!" Henri said. "And the camps? Don't they bother him? What does he think of the camps?"
Vincent smiled. "That they don't exist, that they're an excellent institution, that they'll disappear all by themselves."
"I see," Henri said.
Definitely, people don't enjoy asking themselves questions. One way or another, they all manage to defend their systems.'

“Girls are weighed down with restrictions, boys with demands - two equally harmful disciplines.”

"In her books she willingly proclaimed the inferiority of her sex. But she herself, she imagined, escaped it by the virility of her talent. And she believed she was even superior to men, since, gifted with the same qualities as they, she had in addition the singular and charming merit of being a woman. That trick irritated me."

(I hear you Simone/Anne. The "I'm not like other women" spiel of internalised misogyny is terribly annoying.)

"Foolishness, lies, injustice, suffering; all around me a deep, black chaos. And how absurd it all was! Those days that repeated themselves from week to week, from century to century, without ever getting anywhere. Living was simply a matter of waiting some forty or sixty years for death to come, trudging along through emptiness. That was why I studied so avidly: only books and ideas were able to hold their own; they alone seemed real to me."

I wound up having to add even more to the 20th-Century #Classics display. 😆

Have you read any of these?

#LitsyLovesLibraries #MrBooksDisplays

After a brief hiatus, we are back with this take on intellectual life in a post WWII world. A bit of slog to read, but it gave us lots to think about #1001books #bookpodcast #themandarins #soundcloud #applepodcasts #googleplay

I‘m reading a 1st edition from the library and every so often there‘s a torn-out page that they‘ve replaced with a shitty photocopy bound into the spine of the book.

Maybe this next?

#7favesin7days
3/7

Hour 30. I bought The Mandarins after adoring All Men Are Mortal. It's five years later and I haven't even opened it... #ShareTheShame #24in48 @24in48

"And even if I were somehow able to neutralize their pasts, what kind of future could I offer them? I quiet fears, harness dreams, restrain desires; I make them adjust themselves. But to what? I can no longer see anything around me that makes sense."

I think Simone de Beauvoir and any woman who challenges society's ideas about women is often considered to be a #difficultwoman. Many women featured in these books would have been called #difficultwomen #difficultwomenarestrongwomen #bedifficult #fallintobooks

Opening line: "Henri found himself looking at the sky again - a clear, black crystal dome overhead." #themandarins #simonedebeauvoir #fontanamodernnovels #book #bookish #bookgnome #firstline #bookcover

For today's #booktober #bestsidekick I couldn't really decide: Sam for Frodo? Watson for Holmes? Then: my husband for me (hopefully)? Well, I guess the couple de Beauvoir / Sartre is perfect: you don't know who's the sidekick :)
@RealLifeReading