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#SpringSkies Day 2 #GloryInTitle

@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks @Eggs

#SpringSkies Day 2: #GloryInTitle - part of my book haul sometime in 2022: https://gatheringbooks.org/2022/10/02/bhe-539/ - looking forward to reading it soonest. 💕

For all that it disposes itself well to quoting the text, I'm not certain I have the words necessary to describe all this book achieves. Masterful writing, by turns a humourous and heart-rending account of an African nation surviving post-colonial corrupt and violently oppressive rule, satirizing deluded despots, remembering victims and atrocities, encouraging action even in the face of danger and leaving hope for change. 1/?

And the award for the most VIVID metaphor goes to...🏆

"...a crocodile that calls itself History, that devours the stories of everyone else and goes on to speak for us?" ?

Powerful imagery that sticks with you.

"...liberated through testicles?" !! ?
Okay, Duchess and Comrade Nevermiss Nzinga are now tied for best lines.

Destiny is being a LOT more patient during this interrogation than I would be. Cultural differences...?

I look forward to being elderly.

😬

Duchess is officially my favourite.

A faux pas, given the guest list, certainly. 😏

🚩🚩🚩

♥️ -> 💔

"Very sorry about the coup, I mean cup, sir."
Pfft, awwwwwkward. ?

Just because he's a fictional despot horse doesn't mean he can't bring up some valid points...

24-30 Apr 23 (audiobook)
#Bookerlonglist 12
Shocked to have enjoyed this. Only read it to finish last year‘s list before this year‘s is announced. I expect my opinion would have been different had I actually read the book, but the narrator was fabulous (I tuned out the repetition and lists). Hearing the text read with a Zimbabwean accent brought the authenticity of the African voice to the forefront and the humour. Reminded me of life in Kenya.

I get why this has been longlisted for multiple awards. It's clever. razor sharp satire, funny then gradually darker. But the abundance of literary devices there to make it read like a fairytale get exhausting. There's a reason why fairytales aren't 400 pages long. Maybe once I have some distance I'll appreciate it more, but on reading it was too clever for me and it took me a good 150 pages to connect with the story.

#WomensPrize 2023 #longlist

@AnneCecilie Lists. While this is an extreme example I swear I opened the book on a random page. 😆

The publishers have been pushing the African Animal Farm comparison pretty hard, but the book seems to warn us away from it. But in that case I wonder, why are all the characters farm animals? Is it just to make it funnier? Or to emphasise that they are an agrarian nation? A shortcut to show that the population is harmless and exploited and so domesticated it takes no predator to keep them down? I have 350p to go, so hopefully it'll become clear.

Joining the group consensus.
This started out okay, even interesting in my opinion. But I think it should have been half the length. The repetitive theme makes its point early on and then the story just drags.
I have lots of thoughts about the animal allegory and why I don't think it worked here, mostly though I just think the entirety of it was way too long.
2 stars

Take-take

This is about a page of the word take, it continues onto the next page. I am reading the physical and audio of this and let me tell you listening to 2 minutes of the narrator (who is very good) say this word for 2 minutes is beyond annoying. I fast forward through most of it and even that act was annoying.
I am not sure the point of this creative choice was made on me. I feel like 3 takes would have worked.

Forgot to post my #weeklyforecast
I picked up Glory on audio to speed it along. I am about a 3rd of the way through I'm A Fan and not really loving it. #womensprizelonglist has been very hit or miss for me this year.

This is beginning not as bad for me as it sounds like it is for others. I can already tell it is way too long though.
I think audio was the way to go. #SpringWalks

List for the prize! Great selections for tbr!

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/31/noviolet-bulawayo-and-margo-jeffer...

This is a modern Animal Farm set in Africa. The #audiobook narrator is brilliant. The whole thing is pretty brilliant.

#BookSpinBingo @TheAromaofBooks

That was really hard work. Powerful for sure and beautifully and cleverly written I feel like I underlined at least a third of the book. BUT I also found it hard going with a couple of the literary tools used a little too heavy handed. I also ultimately found the premise of the animals more distracting that adding to the story and thus not quite as invested in the world being created. I may keep going with my #readingafrica2022 and see how I do!

Happy Birthday! 🥳🎂🎉🎊🎈🎈🎈 @wanderinglynn
Reposting #300KBirthdayGiveaway
Book tagged: Glory 🤗

Not finished reading for 2022 yet! But confident in these picks. What a great year for reading #readingbracket2022

Brixton Hall / L Moggach
Lamplighters / E Stonex
Record of the Spaceborn Few / B Chambers
Glory / N Bulawayo
Raptures / J Carson
Amusements / A Flannery
Queen of Dirt Island / D Ryan
Small Things Like These / C Keegan
Theres been a Little Incident / A Ryan
Satsuma Complex / B Mortimer
Snowflake / L Nealon

Definitely a case of #MeNotTheBook but I‘d barely started this before knowing it wasn‘t for me. Something about it just turned me off so I‘m crossing it off my TBR.

I had a feeling this wouldn‘t be for me and I was correct. I appreciated what she was trying to do with allegory, but can‘t say that I liked it. I never found myself wanting to return to this novel once I set it down. Another that felt like a chore to finish.

And that‘s a wrap for my #Booker2022 shortlist reading. I would have loved to see the Colony make it instead of this or Seven Moons. I‘m hoping Keegan or Everett takes the prize.

My second from the #booker2022 list was a tough one. A heavy satire on Zimbabwe history that I really enjoyed for the 1st 2 hrs. But it‘s 16 hrs, and by 4 hrs I was exhausted and ready to bail. @squirrelbrain encouraged me to keep listening, and I‘m glad I did and glad I met Destiny. It‘s a creative and important work, both moving and exhausting, and a lesson on Zimbabwe and the seriously awful legacy of Robert Mugabe.

If I don't write, then who will I blame when I wake up one day to find myself in the belly of a crocodile that calls itself History, that devours the stories of everyone else and goes on to speak for us?

Isn't it something, Destiny, how sometimes stories will raise the dead, as if they are not dead at all but alive in our mouths, only waiting to be animated by our tongues?

Friday #bookmail. I wasn‘t really drawn to Glory, but going to give it a try now that it has made the #Booker2022 shortlist. I‘m reading the Ward with my IRL book club next month. Really looking forward to it!

Lozikeyi whips such a sonic surge the goat feels her head hum; tholukuthi music competes from blaring radios and speakers: a hubbub of voices rises, falls, fades and rises again, cars stutter, roar. rumble and raise dust: playing children's shrieks and chants paint the air the colour of their unbridled joy.

A pick, but not a very solid one.

Glory started off being a hell of a story. It's unique modern spin on Animal Farm instantly hooked me and the writing was phenomenal...at first. Then the repetition begins. I felt like the author was smacking me in the head over and over with the same ideas, but not letting the story fully develop. Just when I almost gave in, it picks up and ends on a high note, but that middle part was difficult to get through.

...words not only mattered but they were power. Words were muti. Words were weapons. Words were magic. Words were church. Words were wealth. Words were life.

So inspired was Tuvy by the realisation that he rechristened his new pet parrot with the name New Dispensation...

What exactly is this meeting that is, from the look of it, the great grand mother of all meetings, about? Thinking What kind of gathering is it that takes place at such a time of witches and strange monsters? Thinking. Have my feet accidentally brought me in the middle of something here? Thinking, Why is it just dogs at this meeting, as if they're the only animals in the Seat?

The Father of the Nation found himself cornered by an enemy against whom he couldn't set his famed Defenders, yes, tholukuthi an enemy that couldn't be tortured, couldn't be raped, couldn't be dis appeared, couldn't be assassinated. He thus faced Age with nothing but anger and his English, lamenting that for all his power and glory he couldn't banish the wretched foe from his life...

I had a real love / hate rollercoaster with this book. Before I started I was prepared to dislike it, as it‘s not really ‘my thing‘. I actually really liked the first few hours on audio, and then it got *really* repetitive and boring. I‘d have bailed had it not been a #booker2022 book.

However it picked up again later on and I ended up really appreciating it. (I can‘t say like / enjoy as it‘s not that kind of book). ⬇️

I started this today, a 16-hour audiobook. So far it seems like an Animal Farm-like take on Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe, but as a rant, if a smart one. I‘m entertained, (and thinking a little about Márquez‘s The Autumn of the Patriarch, and that scene in Parasite where a character imitates Kim Jung-un.)

Nigeria‘s answer to Animal Farm! Loved her first novel and this was a great shift in style.

Animal Farm meets the downfall and aftermath of Mugabe‘s regime in Zimbabwe. Glory is a clever, and quite demanding satirisation of a complex, messy, political environment. Bulawayo digs into some interesting ideas about the impact of colonisation, political corruption, cultural conflict, and international relations with vibrant, original voice. I enjoyed this reading experience but it was just a smidge inconsistent

This was a mixed bag for me. At first I thought the repetition was effective and then it was distancing. The characters being animals did not work for me. I appreciate learning more about Zimbabwe and the story of Destiny was very moving. I think this could have been a much shorter novel and been more effective. 3 🌟
#booker2022 #BookerPrize2022
@MicheleinPhilly @batsy @charl08 @vivastory @squirrelbrain

Currently listening to this as I can‘t sleep. Weird but intriguing!

A feminist and satirical account of the 2017 Zimbabwean coup known as Operation Defend Legacy. Bulawayo draws on Orwell‘s Animal Farm and Ancient Greek traditions as her chorus of oppressed animals, largely femal, expose the unraveling of the promise of the coup. At the heart of the novel is Destiny a young returnee whose family history inspires her to resist the violence of those purporting to defend the revolution. A strong Booker contender

We hear Nkunzemnyama tell us the dead would like to know where justice is, these decades and decades later. We lower our eyes, we drop down our heads. We hear Nkunzemnyama tell us the dead would like to know what has become of their murderers these decades and decades later. We swallow hard. We hear Nkunzemnyama tell us the dead would like to know when they will be appropriately buried. We swallow hard.