Welcome to Litsy!

A mule farm in Pennsylvania
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@Cupcake12

"He rode into our valley in the summer of '89."

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

Like others here, I wanted to read more from Davies after Clear. I liked this one, a novel of obsession, the expansiveness of men‘s lives and the rapid narrowing of girls‘s as they become women. The ending is a tad preposterous but I liked it.

Loved this! Such a tense book, from both the POV of Cy Bellman who goes west to find mythical animals and even more so for his young daughter left behind in the care of Cy‘s sister.

I don‘t think I loved it as much as Clear, and I wasn‘t *entirely* sure about the very end but I definitely want to read more by this author.

Thanks for sending it to me @BarbaraBB 😘

West, by Carys Davies is a wonderful book. I loved Clear .. it‘s my favourite of the two. But West was similar, a story of isolation, of dreams , of what might be and might have been.. of chance. I love the natural settings of her books. Nature in all its stark beauty.

Now on to Sally Rooney, (totally opposite territory to Davies ) Loving it too.

Also a few bails along the way sinse I posted last.

When some huge ancient bones has been discovered out west, Cy Bellman decides to go in search of these big animals. He leaves his 10 yr old daughter to his sister.

A book about a man‘s journey but also about the people staying behind, and how hard it is to be a woman in a man‘s world.

After I loved Clear so much, I picked this up. It starts just as beautiful but then it didn‘t hold my fascination until the end. It‘s still a soft pick with an interesting and beautifully written story.

I now have read all the three books I have packed for my five-days-holiday 🙈 Audiobook on my phone it is for tonight.

#StorySettings

I was pretty obsessed with this #Prairie book when I was young in the 70s & also the tv movie/mini-series it inspired .

Written by Rose Wilder Lane (the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder), it tells the story of Molly & David Beaton, teenage newlyweds in the Dakota Territory during the 1870s & originally was titled Let the Hurricane Roar when it was first published in the 1930s. Pictured is the edition of the book I had.

Just. Wow. Compiled journal entries and stories from the Kansas frontier, from the first settlers in mid 19th century through the civil war and women‘s suffrage. There are heartwarming tales of courage, family, and neighbors helping neighbors, as well as tales of fear and the horrors of life tens of miles away from the nearest neighbor. The isolation broke some women but empowered others. Makes me ever more grateful for modern creature comforts.

This book was impressive. I‘m originally from AZ where the border has always loomed large, where cries for a wall and undue discrimination toward Mexicans and anybody who vaguely looks Latino is a staple. Grandin does an impeccable job tracing the origins of the current anti-immigration, anti-social rights, neoliberal economic, militarist order expressed currently through Trumpism in the disappearance of the frontier or subsequent frontiers.