pickThings in Nature Merely Grow, by Yiyun Li (2025)
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Premise: An insightful, intellectual, literary, and unflinching memoir about life after losing two children to s—cide.
Review: This is obviously a book that deals with very serious and traumatic life experiences. So it feels a bit gross to swoon over it, but I simply cannot express how brilliant this is. ⬇️
pickThough I‘ve read Shapiro‘s fiction, this is my 1st foray into her memoirs, & I absolutely loved listening to her narrate her story. I found myself totally absorbed, listening at every opportunity. This transfixing tale opens when, at 54, after rather thoughtlessly submitting an ancestry DNA sample, she learns that her beloved father was not her biological father. With both of her parents gone, & only a few elderly relatives available to speak.
One of the more interesting passages in the book. Christie was hardly free of the prejudices of her time, but she thought about things white feminists of decades later didn't.
[It's] Les Misérables, it was taken off the market, I managed to get a few copies before they shredded them...
What's it about?"
"A man who, out of starvation, steals a loaf of bread and is hounded by the police for the rest of his life. SAVAK thinks the book might miror some things in our society."
I put it in my scholbag and headed home....
How strange that in our culture books were considered dangerous...
pickI knew a little of Caster Semenya‘s story, as it was in the news when she was competing in the Olympics: controversy over her gender and whether she should be allowed to compete. In her memoir she shares much more to that history than I was aware of. By the end of the book she is still trying to fight the discriminatory rules, for other girls if not for herself. It could have been shorter. I loved the story of her relationship with her wife.
pickI‘ve lived in Gloucestershire for 35 years, so it‘s shocking that I‘ve only just read Laurie Lee‘s tales from his post-WW1 childhood growing up in Slad. The tales vary from almost whimsical to quite brutal recollections, covering both the hardship and the happiness of a lifestyle that no longer exists.
#HomeForTheHolidays #FictionalTraveler @julieclair
Book 8 #10BeforeTheEnd @ChaoticMissAdventures
Book 102 #Read2025 @DieAReader
pickA wonderful book focusing on the small moments of joy in our life, like drinking a cup of something or eating something. A book to read in small doses
Ahhh life - spent the last year after quitting thinking about alcohol, why I drank, my relationship with it, why it is for me both a blessing and a curse. Trying to find the words - and then finding that Jack London expressed pretty much everything I was working towards in his memoir of being a functional alcoholic “John Barleycorn” a hundred years or so ago.
This memoir of 1930s archeological digs in Syria is, unsurprisingly, all kinds of problematic. Still, if you're fond of Christie's voice there's a lot to enjoy, not least of which is her own enjoyment. It's kind of awesome to read about a middle-aged woman gamely heading out on adventures, and as a working member of a team. As a fan, it's also fun to notice where she used her experiences in her fiction.
#10BeforeTheEnd @ChaoticMissAdventures
Bookish Pair: This is enriched by Yiyun Li‘s 2019 autobiographical novel Where Reasons End, which deals with the death of her first son. 2h