Welcome to Litsy!

A dear friend gave me a ticket to join her in a book talk by Irish born author Colm Toibin in early February.What an experience! He is an incredible story teller,witty,wise,full of heart.We laughed so much! I had no idea he was so prolific.He read a moving piece about his mother the only reader of books in her small remote village. His first essay starts with “It all started with my balls.”Who wouldn‘t read on after that opening sentence!🔽

...the knowledge that on Easter Monday 1916 my grandfather had lifted the floorboards of the front bedroom in Bohreen Hill and had taken out some rifles he had hidden there for use in the Rising, this made the house a more serious place. The idea also that my father's younger brother had died of tuberculosis in the house in Bohreen Hill.... this made it a place whose past grew more palpably interesting to me...

One day in the late 1960s I found three forbidden books on top of my mother's wardrobe, three novels that had been banned by the Irish censorship board....

This, then, was samizdat Irish-style where women in a small town who were curious about the outside world would learn to recognize each other and would exchange forbidden texts that dealt with sexuality and adultery.

📖 7-19-22 || ✔️My bonus July poetry selection… This gives us a glimpse into the author‘s private thoughts. I loved his novels Brooklyn and Nora Webster and this is his first poetry book. #poetrymatters

#irishauthors #magnificentmarch @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks @OriginalCyn620

Another non-fiction that caught my eye at the library thanks to the famous phrase. This book is not about Byron, however, but about the fathers of Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, and James Joyce and how they played a part in the works of their sons. I enjoyed this quick book and it makes me interested to read more about the authors themselves and more of their works than I already have read.

#bookhaul - bottom 2 from charity shops, top 2 Waterstones. Tagged book is signed!

I started reading this book more than six months ago. After reading half, I put the book down. I thought it was boring. And today #Brooklyn caught my eye! And then... Boom! 💥 I read the book in a couple of hours! I recognized myself in Eilis! There is no intrigue or mysticism in the book, but there is something elusive and important! 🍀🗽 #ColmToibin

This was a fascinating, quick read (or rather, listen, since it was a #audiobook). Toibin sometimes seemed to stray from his stated purpose (showing how the fathers affected the writing of Wilde, Yeats, and Joyce), yet I didn‘t mind because I was taken by what he was saying.

I need an #audiobook for my Sunday plans of drinking coffee and doing laundry. At only six hours long, I might even be able to finish this one today.