Martyr!: A novel | 
pickThe smartest, most creative, most real book I have read in a very long time. Don't worry about death. Sacrifice yourself to life. Cyrus will always be a part of my heart. The way Akbar wrote about historical martyrs through poetry was ingenious. Cyrus's dreams were beautiful and added so much to Cyrus's quest. It made me ashamed of being American (not owning up to killing 278 Iranian people), but there is hope. You just can't quit searching.
so-so⭐️⭐️💫 Unpopular opinion, but I didn‘t connect with this at all. Found the MC self absorbed and as a result just didn‘t really care about his obsession with martyrdom or any of the side stories from the other characters. I kept thinking “I don‘t care!” to myself and bumping up the playback speed to get it over sooner. Glad others enjoyed it more than I did! #ToB25
pickThis is among my favourites of the #ToB25 books I've read so far. The writing is beautiful, there were interesting and unexpected twists, and I spent some time mulling over the ending. Looking forward to the #LitsyToB discussion.
#gottacatchemall (Emolga: yellow cover) @PuddleJumper
pickBloody brilliant, magic, whimsical. He has a powerful and unique voice, will definitely reread because it has so much content and subtle beauty, existential questions and more. Anyone else read this? Would love to hear your thoughts #martyr #kavehakbar #brilliantbook
So depressing to go back to subzero temps today. I will miss the sun 🌞. 📸: San Jose del Cabo MX
First day of winter quarter should be acknowledged with a trip to the bookstore.
58 total books read, my top five fiction for 2024 is pictured. I feel like I read a lot of books but was only truly in love with very few! Anyway, cheers Litsers!! 🍻
pickWowza, the writing. Some chapters were absolutely magical and others, I wasn‘t even sure they needed to be there (but they do, and people smarter than me will relish in them). What a way to end my 2024 reading! Glad I stuck with this one.
In the animal world, a broken leg meant you starved, so a healed femur meant that some human had supported another's long recovery, fed them, cleaned the wound. And thus, the author argued, began civilization. Augured not by an instrument of murder, but by a fracture bound, a bit of food brought back for another.
pickAnd this is why I cannot make my best of list until Jan 1!! I loved this, the writing is wonderfully poetic, I need to buy a copy so I can mark it up, I wanted to highlight so many lines and paragraphs. I loved all of the characters. Cyrus was a mess but he was an endearing mess.
This has been on so many best of lists and it deserves all the praise it is getting. I loved this
#weeklyforecast
I am so close to finishing Martyr! I am loving it, have less than 100 pgs and it was due back yesterday so hoping to finish today.
I am 20% into We Could Be Rats the new Emily Austin and I am not loving it as much as Fact About Space but will push on.
Want to get to Poor DEER bc Empires both are due back this weekend and so many people are waiting!
My audio for my walks is Worst Hard Time by Egan about the American dust bowl
Persian Mirror Art
"I think about this a lot Cyrus. These centuries of Persians trying to copy the Egyptian vanity, really their self reflection. How it arrived to us in shards. How we had to look at ourselves in these broken fragments, and how those mirror tiles found themselves in all these mosques, the tile work, these ornate mosaics. How those spaces made the fractured glimpses of ourselves near sacred."
Akbar has an amazing use of words. The way he lays out and describes Cyrus' descent into alcoholism is heartbreaking, gorgeous and understandable.
"But Cyrus's true love, his bedrock, his soulmate, was alcohol. Alcohol was faithful, omnipresent, predictable. Alcohol didn't demand monogamy like opiates or meth. Alcohol demanded only that you came back home to it at the end of the night."
pickMartyr! is an absolute pleasure to read. Cyrus‘ struggle with his identity and history makes for truly compelling reading 😊
pickI know of KA primarily as a poet: always creative, always interesting, sometimes very moving, sometimes just plain baffling. This book was all of those things by turn. Or all at once.
Cyrus is colossally self-absorbed, but is aware of the fact. I wanted good things to happen for him.
Structurally, I'm not entirely convinced it worked, but KA makes for a dazzling, rhapsodic novelist. I enjoyed his book very much.
pickI‘m going to be thinking about this one because there is a lot to chew on.
Is this a perfect novel? Nope, in fact there are elements I don‘t appreciate and frankly I‘ve read better debut novels. However Kaveh has a very distinctive creative voice that isn‘t forgettable. This won‘t be a spine on the shelf I‘ll wonder whether I‘ve read.
Matchy today! 🙃 Loving this novel, so witty & insightful. Perhaps a bit self indulgent, but forgivable.
Guffawing at the wholly pathological superficial “politeness” of Midwesterners, which apparently is akin to Iranian etiquette, and describing his rich girlfriend as “American Christian, the kind that believed Jesus had just needed a bigger gun.”
"I just think about that a lot. The ugliness of anger. I don't disagree that it can be harnessed. But it's so irredeemably ugly."
"You're a human being, Cyrus," Sang said, gently. "So was your mother. So am I. Not cartoon characters. There's no pressure for us to be ethically pure, noble. Or, God forbid, aspirational. We're people. We get mad, we get cowardly. Ugly. We self-obsess."
"Can you imagine just losing access to all the art that you most loved, to all the stuff that gave your living purpose? Purpose and fluency? ..... "Imagine all that stuff disappearing," Kareem continued "Literally going up in smoke...."
"Then imagine," Kareem said, "that a bunch of people who'd never met you, for whom you're just a myth, began sending you the art you loved.... Imagine how that might contribute to your sense of amongness.
Addiction is an old country song: you lose the dog, lose the truck, lose the high school sweetheart.
In recovery you play the song backward, and that's where things get interesting. Where'd you find the truck? Did the dog remember you? What'd your sweetheart say when they saw you again
He wanted to be on the right side of history, whatever that Was. But more than that (he admitted this to himself when he was practicing being rigorously honest), he wanted other people to perceive him as someone who cared about being on the right side of history.
pickCyrus is a young man who was born in Iran but grew up in the United States. He is a poet, an orphan, a recovering addict, and has a consuming fascination with death and martyrdom. And while that seems a potentially depressing read, it is surprisingly freeing to see how Akbar addresses so many heavy issues in engaging and enlightening ways. Akbar‘s prose is just exquisite; so many passages just left me dazzled. Such unique, affecting storytelling.
President Invective! ? No need to know in what year this is set in order to figure out who the President is.
"The sort of man whose unwavering assertions of his own genius competence had, to the American public, apparently overwhelmed all observable evidence to the contrary."
pickDeftly written, brilliantly plotted, tenderly wrought.
Don‘t ya love a book that puts your heart through a wringer and confuses you, challenges you, makes you trust the journey anyway, then delivers with a sweet tug?
#Book58_2024 #NoIdeaWhyIReadThisNow #JoslynCastleOmNE
Library holds came in. I'm very excited to read all of these, but slightly inconvenienced that none of them are on the Booker longlist 😆 Another busy reading month ahead, clearly.
“… can‘t you feel this mattering? Right now?”
It matters to me. Know that. It matters deeply.”
Copper finally working with me as photographer 🤣😎📸🐶❤️📚 Just starting this and I know absolutely nothing. Don‘t tell me!
#DogsofLitsy #CopperBopper #WirehairedPointingGriffon #whpg #Griff4short #librarybook #hardcover
pickCyrus, newly sober, is trying to find a reason to live and decides to write a book about martyrs. He is numb. He is depressed. His mother was killed when her plane was blown up by the US. His father died as soon as Cyrus went to college, having completed his fatherly tasks. His uncle was a death angel who rode a horse among dying men in the Iran war. And then he meets a dying artist who is sitting in a museum as she dies. These characters 🔽
pickThis wasn‘t as strong a pick for me as it was for some Littens. I liked Cyrus‘ evolution, but the dream sequences got annoying.
Iranian Cyrus‘ mother‘s plane was accidentally shot down by a US battleship when he was a baby. He and his father immigrate to Indiana where he lives as a typical kid. Newly orphaned, sober, and suicidal in his 20s, he begins to explore and write a book about martyrdom. Yes, it‘s pretty heavy.
pickWow, wow, and more WOW! Not since Decima by Venter Even or Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner have I been so gripped by a novel and protagonist! This book is amazing! Found myself re reading chapters to enjoy the prose again!
I keep thinking about this quote.
pickCyrus is born in Iran but after his mother dies in a plane crash he and his father move to the US.
He beats alcoholism but life in sobriety still is challenging. Until he comes up with the idea to write a book about martyrdom. That changes everything.
The style reminded me a bit of Rushdie and I grew really fond of Cyrus. #CampToB
I‘m only on page 22 and I already love this book. The main character is talking about life after you stop drinking and yowzer I am with him on this one.
Is life better without alcohol? Well….yes. But life sure is different and sometimes I wonder if it‘s worth going without.
It‘s been almost 15 years since I had alcohol and I‘m definitely not as joyful and I‘m also definitely not as depressed. So there‘s that. 🙂
pickThe audio version of this one is narrated so well. It took a while for the plot and story to come around for me, but when the pieces started to finally come together, I can see why so many literary folks adore this
#WeeklyForecast 28/24
I am starting The Alternatives for #CampLitsy24 because I‘ve got a borrowed copy. Thirst for Salt is a gift by Cindy and seems totally in my wheelhouse. Martyr! is a #CampToB book and has had such raving reviews on Litsy that I had to add it to my TBR.
pickOn the face of it, the blurb of this book made me think I wouldn‘t like it, but I was also weirdly drawn to it. I thought, as it‘s a library book, I could bail (me, bail?! Ha!) but I ended up loving it.
The MC, Cyrus, is a recovering alcoholic who decides to write a book about martyrs and spends time talking to an artist whose last installation is her dying days in the Brooklyn Museum. I loved Cyrus, despite and because of all his weirdness. ❤️
I think the description of this book‘s contents made it sound like there was a lot going on or that it would be more experimental but that was not the case: so far each of the stories told are these raw human stories and all of them are so compelling and vividly painted I am fully immersed. The prose is perfect- it‘s both beautiful (you can tell the author is a poet) but also not over done.
pickThis novel is wonderful. One flawed character that tells the story, with different characters‘ POVs to round out the gaps in perspectives and time. It‘s funny, sad, engaging, and cringey. Fantastic.
pickWhat a strange and beautiful novel! I found this to be a challenging read, I read it in audio format with an A++++ narration by Arian Moayed. Intensely readable, with characters that are easy to love. This was outside my usual reading comfort zone, I‘m so glad to have not passed this one up, I just loved it. 💜
