Welcome to Litsy!

Taste does not come by chance: it is a long and laborious task to acquire it.
--Sir Joshua Reynolds, 18th century painter and academician

I‘m not confident about many of the microdecisions I made in 2025‘s #ReadingBracket. Truth is, I had an INCREDIBLE reading year! A bunch of the match-ups could‘ve gone either way. I think I feel pretty confident about the WINNER (though I did read it a while ago now).

Best I can *confidently* do is a Top 7 (tagged below)!

•Giving Up the Ghost
•Journal of a Solitude
•Night Swimmers
•Sleep
•Death Valley
•The Ten Year Affair
•Moominland Midwinter

The Unworthy was definitely my favorite fiction book but I Am Ozzy won overall 🖤
#MyBookofTheYear #BookBracket2025
@Catsandbooks

Oh yes, she will!

This book is a hoot & so is Rue! She‘s candid about her poor taste in men & she hilariously rates all bedroom romps by her FQ system: Fun Quotient!😂
Loved learning about her impressive theatrical career, working with top playwrights.
We all know Rue for her standout roles in Maude & Golden Girls (with coolest inside stories!), but she‘s been in so much more.
Rue finally found love with hub #6 but her son Mark was the guy always there for her.

Infamously unrevealing, but Wharton‘s voice was gorgeous. Her prose magnificent. What she does tell us, including extensively about Henry James, is magical. All of it. She captures a world that existed before WWI, the experience of that war, and her personal devastation afterwards as she realizes that pre-war world is lost.

I wrote a long review here: https://www.librarything.com/work/46322/reviews/261461607

#whartonbuddyread

McCarthyism: “no one will ever know how much inventive and progressive talent during that period was stifled and stultified.“ 😔