#Poemadayish #poetrypals
Ugh it‘s been a rough few days. Anxiety 😟 Trying to focus on being present.
@dabbe @lil1inblue
"...seeming to know him, or at least to recognise his face, from where or from when they would surely recall if only they could concentrate hard enough. But they couldn't. No one can, in this world that Godley wrought. Something keeps getting in the way, keeps turning their thoughts aside, keeps blunting them, or absorbing them altogether, and soon something else comes along to engage their ever-waning attention."
pickI read this too late for the book club meeting for which it was selected, and although I can't claim to understand it, I did enjoy it. I think Banville is saying something about the nature of truth, creation of reality, the author/story relationship, and perhaps the short attention spans and anti-intellectualism of our times. A lot of it is over my head, but I like how he portrays the characters.
pick⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️I think fiction set during The Troubles is fascinating, &I learned a lot in this book, but it is a hard one to rate and review - it never really takes its foot off the gas. By that I don‘t mean that it‘s plot heavy, because it really isn‘t, but there just is not a lot of rest or relief for our characters. You do get a bittersweet, mildly hopeful ending, so you can picture Maeve building a wonderful life, but it was pretty bleak overall.
pick“Each of us is afraid. It‘s there in the way we hold our cups. It‘s in the way we look about us, squinting into the misty nooks of the bar to see what‘s hidden…….Tonight we‘re not drinking to forget, but to remember and dream. It‘s hope that makes us afraid and I remind myself that a man should be grateful for his fears, because it means he has something to lose and to win.”
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so-soBjarni is sent into exile for 5 years and spends the time working as a mercenary in the Irish Sea and Scotland.
This was the author's last book, left unfinished at the time of her death, but unfinished in the sense of unpolished rather than incomplete. It does show in that I found it didn't hold my interest as much as her Roman novels. The world building and insight into Viking life and customs was good, but the story itself was rather meh.
pickThis satire is a blazing takedown of cancel culture and our collective obsession with social media and being chronically online. I love John Boyne‘s books but have read about his own recent situation which he was “cancelled”. Knowing his personal views and in light of recent events, I read this through a lens of “this is how the author feels” when outrageous and over the top “woke” characters were skewered. An absurd #dysfunctionalfamily.⬇️
