Welcome to Litsy!

What a strange, wonderful book! The book-within-a-book format is well done, and both stories are compelling, especially as one begins to overlap with the other. It's quirky and funny and feminist. I picked this one up due to a persuasive shelf talker at a local bookstore.

Great concept- messy, execution. Wanted so much more than I got here, which is disappointing although I shouldn‘t have been surprised based on reviews I‘d read in advance.

Not loving this book, am loving this quote, perhaps because I‘m nostalgic for the classroom

Interesting take on mermaid culture and ecology, but I'm not sure the meta-novel quite works for me here. I do like how it allows for commentary about the autobiographical nature of fiction, but I found the inner novel---and eventually also the container novel---tedious to read. It also seems like one of those books that's maybe trying to send a message I'm not quite receiving. I laughed out loud several times while reading, so there's that.

🇺🇸🧜‍♀️ I have this on my kindle, set to Airplane ✈️ Mode, in case I get inspired. (I usually read my e-books on my iPad.)

But, I just could not seem to make progress through this book! Kept forgetting who and what was happening. I am going to cut and run ✂️ 🏃‍♀️ 🪂

The only book available from #tob23longlist on my library‘s eBook system (Libby) that I found so far (many on hold, which is fine.) I was looking fewest pages to most.

This too ambitious debut is a satire of adapting a book for the screen in LA, a book-within-a-book about a rescued orphan who is actually a mermaid, and possibly a fantasy about art bleeding into life. Sometimes slow, sometimes really funny, sometimes heartfelt… I‘ll read more by this author to see how she develops her craft.

Today, I guessed this book cover on Bookdle. I‘ve seen this book before but it took me 10 seconds to guess it.

Decided I hated that last book so I‘m starting this one.

5-24-23: My 58th finished book of 2023! A book within a book! Penny, a 10th grade English teacher, has written a feminist story about a disabled woman who finds out she has super powers. Penny‘s book gets optioned into a movie and she moves to LA to work with 2 screenwriters to help turn her book into a decent script. Sadly along the way, she watches as the soul of her story constantly gets pushed around. It alternates between Penny and the story.

Penelope has written her debut novel, about a woman who discovers she‘s a mermaid, and goes to LA to help write the screenplay. We see the lunacy of Hollywood alongside portions of her very campy book. This was weird, but not in a way that worked for me. Plus, it went very weird in a way that wasn‘t fully explored but could have been interesting. Pretty cover, though.