Welcome to Litsy!

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.

This is another great historical fiction by Jennifer Nielsen. Set in Poland throughout WWII, it follows Lidia from the initial German invasion through the final days of the German occupation. It‘s a harrowing story of those who joined the Polish resistance. I‘ve read stories of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, but this was a broader story of resistance throughout the city.

#audiobook #MiddleGrade #WWII #TRS2025

#ChristmasCrimeChallenge “set in winter”
#Roll100

A quirky kind of mystery, occasionally funny, sometimes sad.

“The psyche is our defense system - it makes sure we never understand what is going around us. It‘s main task is to filter information, even though the capabilities of our brain are enormous. For it would be impossible to carry the weight of this knowledge because every tiny particle of the world is made of suffering.”

"On my name day it began to rain, so we moved the chairs into the hall to sit it out until the rain stopped. But it never ended; it came streaming down relentlessly, obscuring the horizon. Not in drops, but in stair rods."

I really loved this musing on rain and I am glad I read this in the fall the perfect time to absorb the beauty of her writing.

While I really enjoyed this I do think it is a bit too long. I really ran out of steam the last 50 pages or something.

Something Tokarczuk does so well is weave stories into one book that make you feel like you are sitting on a porch while neighbors drop by and tell you gossip. You have the story of the villager who walked up the mountain to see his childhood home, the story of a saint - and the monk who wrote her story, the story of the man 👇

Reading the new Tokarczuk and she tells the story of Saint Wilgefortis (aka Kummernis or Solicitous) a 14th century nun whose father tries to force her to marry and she is "given" the face of Jesus to show how virtuous she was and how she was called to religion.

She is considered the Patron Saint of Intersex people specifically and the LGBTQ+ community in general.

I am so glad this book landed on my radar. I learned so much. Very emotional read. The amount of determination and courage to research the Home Army women fascinated me. A hero. @OutsmartYourShelf #Research

If I can finish 5 of my current reads, I'll be happy. #TurnthePage @Bookwormjillk Thanks for doing this.

Same.

Just finished Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. Excellent read.