Welcome to Litsy!

@BookishMadHatter - thank you for my awesome #allhallowsreadswap package! I'm so excited to start the books and much on some tasty chocolate.
Thank you @MaleficentBookDragon for organizing a great swap.

This is a supremely frustrating book. The writing is great, but it is in desperate need of editing. It goes on and on in a way that just makes it a slog, then finally perks up in the last quarter. The only reason I stuck with it was that I was determined not to bail on two #NBAshortlist for translated lit books in a row. If you try to read it and get bogged down, I recommend skipping forward to chapter 11 and going from there.

A soft pick. @Jari-chan did warn me!

This reads a little like a novella length fairy tale for adults.

Diane is born to a mother who is incapable of loving her. Despite receiving love and affection from her grandparents, father, & siblings this lack cripples her emotionally and establishes her overachieving adult trajectory. Only through a violent tragedy is she able to close the circle by connecting another victim of the same trauma.

#Roll100

Another 4 books on the National Book Awards longlist. I had no idea the tagged book was such a chunkster until it arrived!

I also have 2 on order from eBay but they‘re not arriving for a few weeks yet.

I‘m reading The Antidote in print - it‘s too early to say what I think yet. I‘m also listening to The Sisters on audio and, goodness me, it‘s long! 😬

Hertman's Ghent house,where he lived for 20 years,is a metaphor for Belgium's history after World War I.The family that lived there represents the divided society during Nazi occupation: collaborators&opponents as the family is divided within the house-the father,Willem Verhulst,who wears an SS uniform,is an informer&Nazi,while the mother,Mientje,is a liberal,art lover,&religious woman. Hertmans combines his own memories of the house

The Remembered Soldier, by Anjet Daanje (2019, transl. 2025)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A former soldier experiencing severe amnesia and PTSD struggles to recover his memories and life after he is brought home from an asylum by a woman who identifies him as her husband.

Review: This is a stunning, deeply moving literary love story that will reward patient readers. ⬇️

The narrator,telling his grandfather‘s story,is present throughout almost the entire book.The narrative is interspersed with photos of places the narrator visits or masterpieces that influenced his grandfather or that his grandfather painted himself.In the second chapter,the first person narrator is no longer the grandson but it switches into the grandfathers point of view.We follow him into World War I trenches and combat.That makes it difficult

This WWII novel is more about the inhabitants of 33 Place Brugman- the resistance, the Jews, the bystanders and the Nazi collaborators. The POV chapters kept the plot moving at a great pace. Characters were great even when they weren‘t. Enjoyable novel!

This never really came together for me. It was well-written, but I didn‘t feel like the ultimate threat really carried the story. I almost #dnf. #queer #horror

Losing steam on this book, but there‘s a week left of #summerjob anyways. #summerreading #queer #horror