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review
Anna40
The Lost Shtetl | Max Gross
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Pickpick

Gross deals with old Jewish issues in an original way: assimilation vs. isolation,small-town community vs. opening up to modern big cities,the Shoah,survivor‘s guilt&intergenerational trauma.The tone is rarely sad,the story told with humour&love for its characters &the fictional village of Kreskol. The book can be summarized quickly. After a dramatic divorce, Pesha, the wife, disappears, followed shortly after by her ex-husband.

Anna40 Yankel, the village outsider, is sent looking for them but what he finds is a world completely alien to him& so he marvels at cars,phones,indoor restrooms&many other things we‘re used to in our modern world. For Kreskol has slept through everything:the Shoah,moon landing,establishment of the state of Israel,… . The book could have been shortened a little but overall I enjoyed how Gross brings the Shtetl to life &lets his characters grapple with 3d
Anna40 difficult situations. 3d
26 likes2 comments
blurb
monalyisha
Pew | Catherine Lacey
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My fabulous #AuldLangSpine list from @Billypar — submitted mostly without comment for the time being. Obviously, I love it! I‘ve read a few…but many weren‘t even on my radar (which is exactly how I like it). I‘ll post about my pretty little plans sometime soon.

Thanks, Vinny! I‘m looking forward to January! 🖤

Chelsea.Poole Great list! #8 rearranged my thoughts one to ponder over for sure! 6d
Billypar I just finished adding your selections to a new ALSpine Libby shelf - excited to get started! I hope you enjoy what you pick up. I loved your All Fours review, btw. I think I was reading that novel like a romantic comedy/drama via the Twilight Zone, so I went with a lot of the ridiculousness, but there is no excusing the line you quoted, which I somehow did not remember 😅 6d
Billypar Yeah, it did that to mine too @Chelsea.Poole ! 6d
See All 9 Comments
monalyisha @Billypar I love the comparison to the Twilight Zone. I'm trying to imagine what (truly small) changes could be made to turn it into an episode. I think, despite the lack of consummation, it would have to end with her hotel room becoming a TRUE nest. Like, there'd be a bloody egg sitting like a jewel atop her goddamn pink coverlet. (edited) 6d
Billypar @monalyisha Yes! That is too perfect (and she did love talking about that coverlet, right?). I think in this version, Rod Serling walks out, and he's got the line about the future reaching back in time to cup your balls 🫠 6d
monalyisha @Billypar I cackled. 😂 6d
TheBookHippie Number two is one of my all time favorite books. 6d
vivastory I have many of these on my TBR, but the, 3 I read are fantastic::5, 10, 17...& I'm nearly done with 11 which is also excellent 6d
monalyisha @vivastory 5 (Pew, tagged) might be the title I'm looking forward to the most. 11 (Mrs. Dalloway) is one that I've read...but I'm actually considering a reread! It's been a good 15+ years, I recently scored a beautiful used copy at a local shop, and I still think of that first line (about buying the flowers herself) often. Miley Cyrus' single might've had a lot to do with that in the past couple of years, tbh. 😅 But it was true before then, too! 6d
50 likes9 comments
review
angieinwonderland
The Everlasting | Alix E. Harrow
Pickpick

I don't read time travel books, unless authored by Alix Harrow. Somehow she managed to write so beautifully that she didn't make it repetitive. Books about knights don't generally make their way on my tbr, but again, it seems the author defied this as well. The writing, the themes and depth of the story kept me reading a book I shouldn't have even wanted to pick up.

11 likes1 stack add
blurb
rpsingletary
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rpsingletary LOGLINE: Man faces loss, travels, heals. Metaphor of Istanbul: shape-shifting city:: we all have many names, but meaning? We must add ourselves.

A sexually ambiguous man falls to pieces after a child-death and his marriage's demise. He turns to nearly every drug imaginable (religion, travel, sex, talk-therapy, family, folklore...) before reconnecting with a past love thought foregone; meanwhile, he comes into the inheritance of an ancestral...
2w
rpsingletary 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 📚 🎬 ✅ ✅ ✅ 🎥 🎤 📸 🌷 ☕ ☕ ☕ 💐 🌼 🌈 🌈 🌈 ⬇ 🗻 💻 🐬 🚆 🎿 🏈#arc #arc #readers #advanced #advancedreaders #review #reviewers #bookreview 🤘 2w
1 like2 comments
review
Billypar
Pew | Catherine Lacey
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Pickpick

The short plot description of this novel, 'a mostly mute young person of unidentified gender or race with memory loss is taken in by a family in a small southern town' doesn't begin to describe the experience of reading the novel because of how we view the events through that person's perspective. Instead of Pew being the focus of a mystery, we see various characters spreaking to them in long unanswered portions that almost remind me of a play, 👇

Billypar in that almost no one says what they really mean, and what outwardly passes for Christian hospitality is undercut with menace and anxiety in equal doses. It's less of a novel with some neat message about sexism or racism than one that looks into the core of what drives those behaviors in the first place. This was my first novel from Lacey, and I was very impressed with her lyricism, ear for dialogue, and just the right amount of humor mixed in. 2w
sarahbarnes Great review. I loved this one. 2w
Ruthiella @Billypar @sarahbarnes I feel like if you two did #AuldLangSpine you‘d be pretty well matched!😅 2w
See All 10 Comments
Billypar @sarahbarnes I was just looking back at a few older, very positive Litsy reviews when it came out, and I think I completely missed it. 2w
sarahbarnes @Ruthiella you might be right! I‘ve never done #AuldLangSpine! 2w
sarahbarnes @Billypar I just read her new one and really liked it. 2w
Billypar @Ruthiella Agreed! @sarahbarnes and I were both part of the #nyrbbookclub led by @vivastory, and I think that group was on the same wavelength - Pew would have fit right in with those picks. 2w
Suet624 I still think Pew is my favorite of hers. 2w
Reggie Oh, I loved this book so much. 2w
Billypar @Suet624 @Reggie I liked going back and reading the Litsy discussions on it that you guys were part of when it came out. I'm glad it was a bookclub selection because it's the sort of novel you want to connect with others on after you finish. 2w
37 likes10 comments
review
BookmarkTavern
The Everlasting | Alix E. Harrow
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Pickpick

Once, there was a knight. Then, there was a scholar documenting the knight‘s legends many years later. The 2 stories aren‘t supposed to meet, until a mysterious book arrives in the scholar‘s lap.

WTF was this book. A love story, Arthurian vibes, a time loop, a tale about the power of stories, what makes a nation or a kingdom, & grasping your own destiny between your hands. This left me crying, & I want to read this again immediately.🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗

BookmarkTavern #UnstackMyShelf Free Space CW 👇🏻 (edited) 2w
BookmarkTavern General warning for past parent death; Chapter 18, abortion 2w
78 likes4 stack adds2 comments
review
Clare-Dragonfly
The Everlasting | Alix E. Harrow
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Pickpick

Alix E. Harrow tricked me into reading a time travel book!

OK, when I say she tricked me I mean she wrote a book and therefore I read it.

And I did love it despite the time travel. I was riveted as Owen untangled the path of his own story and that of his country. I never guessed what was going to happen next. My heart was broken and mended. This is a story about stories, and about history, and above all about love.

Clare-Dragonfly It belatedly occurs to me that while I don‘t like time travel, I DO like stories where memories get messed with, and there‘s a lot of that in here. 2w
34 likes2 stack adds1 comment
blurb
sjc731
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dabbe 🖤🐾🤎 2w
2 likes1 stack add1 comment
blurb
thegirlwiththelibrarybag
The Everlasting | Alix E. Harrow
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An early birthday present from a friend who lives on the other side of the world who did get a bit stressed that the Australian release date for this would arrive before the book did (funnily enough it arrived day of). Genuinely hilarious getting a text suggesting that I stay out of bookshops 🤣 This is one of my most anticipated books of the year.

AmyG Beautiful book. 3w
47 likes1 stack add1 comment