pickTaffy is so good at teasing apart family relationships and finding what makes characters tick. I wish the ending hadn‘t wrapped so quickly, though.
A wealthy father is kidnapped and tortured for a week. He comes back a broken man to his wife and young children. It affects each of the three kids differently into adulthood. When the family money dries up, they have a reckoning with what their lives have become.
pickI see this only received a 33% rating on Litsy. I completely understand that people may not like it but upon finishing this book I immediately fell into a deep dive into all it had/still has raised within me. A love story, an escape into the deep woods of Montana, the writing, I was hearing the cadence of long lost relatives, the story-quick & to the point-has all the makings of a Western but it's completely Irish. Tom and Polly. The 10,000 (cont)
Akbar has an amazing use of words. The way he lays out and describes Cyrus' descent into alcoholism is heartbreaking, gorgeous and understandable.
"But Cyrus's true love, his bedrock, his soulmate, was alcohol. Alcohol was faithful, omnipresent, predictable. Alcohol didn't demand monogamy like opiates or meth. Alcohol demanded only that you came back home to it at the end of the night."
so-soWhat in the world did I just read and why? So far, the #ToB25 shortlist has NOT delivered gems to my reading life. This was weird and I was lost most of the time, though maybe that was part of the point…? Felt like I was wandering in a dark forest, like the cover. Though I did think more about translators and their experiences than ever before. I‘ve undoubtedly missed something so I guess I‘ll learn from the discussion. That ending though!
pickThis is a low pick for me, which is on me not the book. The book is excellent. I appreciate how the language and tone shift from pov to pov inside of the stories, and each tenant is a full person. I think I just needed more depth at the moment. Some of these stories are only 10-15 pages and while you get a feel for each person you also feel like a lot of their story is missing.
Overall though this is excellently constructed.
pickOoh! I like this one a lot! In some ways, it reminds me of Martha Wells's Murderbot in that the main character is a (partial) outsider whose perspective on Earth and our species and Americans even more specifically is more poignant because she lacks an expectation of shared humanity with those she observes. It asks the reader, who on the planet *isn't* a visitor here? This is one I want to mull for a while and perhaps gift to a couple of people.
so-so⭐️⭐️⭐️ This was on the #ToB2025 long list, but it didn‘t really work for me. Set in dystopian version of the Great Lakes, MC and his wife take in a boarder who it turns out is on the run and that sets off a chain of unfortunate events. My issue was that it wasn‘t clear what the MC wanted other than avoiding bad things, so not really compelling. And the resolution seemed to come out of nowhere. 🤷♀️ Glad when it was done.
#JólabókaflóðSwap was mailed earlier this week in the rain so I didn‘t get a photo but rest assured it‘s in its way. In fact, it should be delivered today. @MaleficentBookDragon
pickPosing Copper with the🎄has been a challenge this season! Or maybe he only cooperates when I tell him it is for Litsy?! 😂
Audio 🎧 was a good way to experience this and I give kudos to the narrator Cassandra Campbell 🌟 Her voice was perfect for the present tense and the repetition. We get such interesting insight into a broad view of the female psyche; how diverse our wants and needs might be. We are fighters all.
pickPerceptive, relatable observations that feel like simple,contemporary, slice-of -life moments, shot through with increasingly abstract and experimental expansions on previously introduced themes: 1/?
