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review
Graywacke
Solenoide | Mircea C?rt?rescu
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Pickpick

Phew. My 5th book from the International #Booker longlist took some time, and some perseverance. It flows, it‘s just keep going. A schoolteacher learns of the layout of electrical solenoids connecting through Bucharest, becomes a mite messiah, floats two feet over his bed loses his way in every building, and turns into something like a sperm. Dear reader, you're left to decide what to make of this.
#IB2025

Suet624 Haha. Love this review. 5d
See All 10 Comments
BarbaraBB I am not sure I‘m going to read it… 5d
Tamra Got this one for my husband because it sounds like it‘s right up his alley. 5d
Graywacke @BarbaraBB it‘s a commitment. But you‘re my imagined fearless reader. You might love it. (Although Im finding the biggest fans grew up in Eastern Europe. Seems many feel they can relate) 4d
Graywacke @Tamra just don‘t let him blame me! 😇 4d
BarbaraBB Thank you, that‘s a huge compliment coming from you! Yet I do have some fear for such a chunkster! 4d
sarahbarnes Great review! I just started this one and I‘m already tied in mental knots. It feels like a Pynchon novel. But I‘m strangely attracted to the story so we‘ll see how far I get…. 4d
Graywacke @sarahbarnes you‘re just beginning the adventure. There are highs and lows. You have so much stuff ahead of you! 4d
53 likes1 stack add10 comments
blurb
Graywacke
Solenoide | Mircea C?rt?rescu
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Next international #booker book. I‘m about 20% in - it‘s long. #IB2025

blurb
emz711
Passport | Herta Mller
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Such nice gifts this year!

review
IuliaC
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Mehso-so

This psychological and metaphysical prose was published in the 1930s. It feels like a confession, where the outside world is perceived as too common, boring and useless and the narrator struggles to escape it by hiding in his inner world, where anxiety, unrest and morbid thoughts torture him.

Bookwomble I gave up on this one when it started describing child sexual abuse and had recently been thinking of trying it again now I'm prepared for that content, but I think perhaps not, after all. 2y
IuliaC @Bookwomble Now that you've mentioned it, I'm not sure if that was an actual scene which took place in reality, or just a bizzare imagining in the narrator's hyperreality where he placed precocious or forbidden love experiences... 2y
Bookwomble @IuliaC I think you're right, but narratively real or imagined, I wasn't prepared for those scenes, which put me off, at least temporarily, from continuing. On reflection, I don't think I will go back to it. 2y
IuliaC @Bookwomble I can understand why. I found this book hard to read in general 2y
50 likes4 comments
quote
charl08
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The goal: to educate the Censor inside every thinking human being. To train them to be their own Censor, but to not even suspect it, to not know.

dabbe #bestshirtever I need to find it and buy it! 🤩🤩🤩 (edited) 2y
dabbe @charl08 Oh holy guacamole, Batman! I'm going on a shopping spree! (🤫, don't tell my husband!) 🤩🤩🤩 Thanks for the link! 🤗 2y
charl08 @dabbe v😂👏👏 2y
45 likes4 comments
quote
charl08
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Many rumors are circulating about her, she's become a legend in Censorship! What degradation, from a censor to a poet! How shameful!

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charl08
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How is it possible for them to write so many novels?
[...] Writers-a bunch of parasites that just write and write, with all the abundance of incontinence they're capable of. Readers, the poor things, read what's published, what they're offered, but they nonchalantly and with indemnity skip over all the passages that bore them, a sign of mental health, of course. If I weren't a censor, I'd do the same, I don't even think I'd read, actually.

Tamra Love the view! 2y
Cathythoughts Beautiful scene ❤️ 2y
charl08 @Tamra @Cathythoughts I wish I could post the birdsong too. 2y
47 likes3 comments
quote
charl08
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She asks me: When was the last time you felt satisfied?

I want to laugh the question off, then I think about it: When was the last time I felt truly satisfied? When? She's expecting me to name a book, to brag about some successful author, maybe some lover.....

But no, no, I know when, being completely serious:
-One night recently... when I killed a mosquito that was keeping me from sleeping.

🤣

quote
charl08
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Despite her many other obligations and tasks, she managed to fill up a thick A4-format notebook... writing almost daily there as well (things that often had nothing to do with her professional obligations). The archival collection of the institution of censorship is immense, miles of documents, and that is after a large part... had already been destroyed. One conclusion would be that censors became truly addicted to writing

review
IuliaC
Zenobia | Gellu Naum
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Pickpick

Gellu Naum is a Romanian avant-garde writer and founder of the Romanian Surrealist group. This novel was published in 1985.
With stream of consciousness and hyperrealism, he achieves a beautiful and poetic philosophical prose, centered on Zenobia as the main character, his beloved wife and muse, "an incarnation of the Woman Spirit that alternately seduces him, sustains him, and scares him half to death."

BarbaraBB Love that wall 😍😍😍 (edited) 2y
IuliaC @BarbaraBB in a hotel room; I liked it too 😊 2y
Parvez Excellent review 2y
IuliaC @Parvez thank you 😊 2y
59 likes1 stack add4 comments