Welcome to Litsy!

From buildings to art to an entire island, An Inventory of Losses explores 12 things which no longer exist, each in its own story/essay/chapter and each in a slightly different way. It‘s a clever and interesting book that I quite enjoyed.

2021 NBA longlist, translated lit

Here‘s my #bookhaul from Powell‘s! There may also be some gifts I bought that aren‘t pictured. 🤫 What a good day! ☺️

#ConflictedWorlds Day 22: #PersonVsInsecurities - I would assume that losses will bring about feelings of insecurity. Since we are now back in the UAE, we MUST have (healthy) Mediterranean food. Lebanese crab salad with pineapples and strawberries, the unforgettable falafel fatteh (crunchy pita bread, warm chickpeas, falafel, yogurt, topped with fresh pomegranates), and spinach pie on the side. Super comfort food.

Blurring the line between fiction and essay, the 12 pieces in this contemplative book are about things forgotten, destroyed, extinct or otherwise lost forever. The settings vary widely and each piece has its unique genre, tone or voice. From the strong introductory preface to the black-on-black images between stories to the final setting on the moon, I took my time and enjoyed the gorgeous prose #translated by Jackie Smith. #LGBTQ

The fragment, we know, is the infinite promise of Romanticism, the enduringly potent ideal of the modern age, and poetry, more than any other literary form, has come to be associated with the pregnant void, the blank space that breeds conjecture. […] Intact, Sappho‘s poems would be as alien to us as the once gaudily painted classical sculpture.
(Image: Vinzenz Brinkmann online)

At some point someone taps me on the shoulder. My mother‘s voice says: It‘s over. I open my eyes. We are back outside. I kept my eyes closed the whole time, I say proudly. I cheated it. I cheated fear. What a waste of money, says my mother and lifts me out of the car.
(Internet photo)

It is as if, in the places where the singing has faded away and the words are missing, where the papyrus scrolls are rotten and torn, dots had appeared, first singly, then in pairs, and soon in the vague pattern of a rhythmic triad—the notation of a silent lament.
(The Love Songs of Sappho)

This book, like all others, springs from the desire to have something survive, to bring the past into the present, to call to mind the forgotten, to give voice to the silenced, and to mourn the lost. Writing cannot bring anything back, but it can enable everything to be experienced.

I was leading the life of a home dweller, of a library frequenter, permanently on the lookout for new research subjects to shed light on some hidden source of my existence and lend some kind of meaning to my life by the semblance of a daily work routine. So once again: they thought what they thought, and they saw what they saw, and they were right.

This book should be read slowly and with care, as Judith Schalansky‘s meditations on lost objects and places had to teach me how to encounter them. Each meditation unspooled in an unexpected way, and once I realized that the meandering journey was the point, I settled into the rhythms and tried to match up to the author‘s breadth of imagination. The text is dense and indulgent. Some of the ideas still scratch at me late at night. A unique meal.

Chapters starts with different objects/theme (house, animal, film, painting ...) lost to the world forever, and from there, she knits around those objects some fictional narrative, or some personal memories, essays ... I think that content of this book is remarkable idea, that the title is brilliant, but ... each chapter is written in a different style (very bold decision), but unfortunately that is also what makes this book just ... 👇

Did I just get a hint to read Clarke‘s Piranesi⁉️

A confused just-a-pick. It may have been a more solid pick had I read the print (Schalansky is also a book designer. Kindle doesn‘t cut it), gone in with no expectations (I love her Remote Islands) and read it as a dip-in-and-out, rather than cover-to-cover.

The book is a mix of genres, essays and short stories, around things which are no more. The lost things themselves are fascinating - I could easily fall down a Google rabbit hole to learn

A truly evocative bundle of narratives and essays, some amazing and some okay.