Welcome to Litsy!

Rachel Cusk wrote this memoir (almost a series of essays) about becoming a mother in 2001. Cusk talks about motherhood in both an intellectual way & a personal way - theres a little humor but theres a lot of distress in here. For me it is the first book ive read that captured some of the trauma & undoing of self that i personally felt going full speed from a difficult birth into a severe lack of sleep & feelings ⬇️

Not that it will happen, but every soon-to-be father should be required to read sections of this book. A woman explains what her life has become once she has become a mother. Her husband is busy at work and he abdicates all responsibility for the child. The exhaustion, anger, disappointment, loneliness, desperate love and raging anger toward a young child, all of it was perfectly described.

#offtheshelf

Lots of laughs about motherhood and some bittersweet thoughts about aging.

10/80

February #BookSpin @TheAromaofBooks

#ReadingMyTBR #Read2025 @DieAReader

Moving on to this month's #BookSpin
Oh! And lookee there #Roses on the cover for #FeelinTheLove 😁

#25Alive!

Is it a #Gift if you get it for completing a reading challenge? I received this book in the mail this week & it‘s from #OnceUponABookClub for finishing their 2024 40 Book Challenge. I‘m happy to have been gifted a book I haven‘t read yet & it looks pretty good. 🤗

Thanks to our hosts @Eggs & @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks for this month of prompts. I can‘t believe it is February tomorrow! 😬

Clover, stay at home mom of two young kids, is obsessed with health food and therefore grocery stores. Her anxieties are revealed to readers as we also slowly learn about her past. No spoilers here! So I won‘t get much more into the plot but it felt interesting and somewhat likely while I was reading it but looking back it‘s all very improbable. TW for domestic violence (a particular scene chilled the blood in my veins!)

A preschool teacher is killed and the kids drink blood. Who did it? Really funny and entertaining. Read for a Facebook group.

I started another from the Canada Reads Longlist while I waited for the final announcement today. So far, THE WHISPERS has the potential to say important things about the expectations people hold for white suburban moms versus the reality they live, but I‘m not sure if it‘ll do enough deconstruction for my tastes.

It didn‘t make the shortlist anyways, and I won BIG with the books that did! I‘ve either read them or I have them in my library stack.

A novella about a woman who goes along with her partner‘s desire to have a child even though she doesn‘t want to be a mother. Her intentions are good but of course everything changes in their lives. Powerful emotions run throughout these pages, from isolation to desire and back again. An undeniably strong story that I liked but didn‘t quite love.