Welcome to Litsy!

Has anyone else read Knausgaard? If so, what do you think of him? This is the first book I started of his, and almost immediately I fell completely head over heels in love with his writing! It's just so... beautiful! I don't even know how to describe it, but it's just absolutely mesmerizing! 💕📚

Unfortunately, there is something that happened within the first 20 pages that almost made me put the book aside 👇🏻

I have mixed feelings about this book. I found it so compelling and unsettling throughout that I was on pins and needles much of the time and couldn‘t put it down. And then, suddenly, it ended with so much left untold. I don‘t need stories to be fully resolved, but I did want more at the end of this one. Nevertheless, a pick because it was very good until the end. Thanks for putting this one on my radar @batsy !

This was a pick with the caveat that it may not be for everyone, as the writing style could be difficult. There are shifting narratives, sometimes within the same sentence, and lots of extended paragraphs of text where ideas loop back and are repeated. It‘s a story of loneliness and grief and the repeated trauma of generations. Definitely will need a reread to capture what I missed in the first reading.

#wondrouswednesday
Thanks to @Eggs @eeclayton

1. I did OK on my (loose) goals:
Participate in all #FoodandLit challenges: I read a book for every month ✔, but I sometimes cheated a bit on the home cooking front
Read books set in the Creuse department of France: ✔
I am happy with my progress w/ my Global Challenge (https://www.librarything.com/topic/338585): I added a few countries to the list, and reached the 5-book goal for some ✔
⬇

Visited a book sale during Christmas Eve. Very quiet, no crowd at all, unlike the previous years. Believe it or not, I only managed to get ONE book. Well, there were more children‘s books than adults, so 🤷🏻‍♀️.
Anyway, I want to wish everyone who celebrates a very Merry Christmas - a Christmas filled with love, peace, and joy. 🎄

Loved it - 1 of November's highlights. Utterly charmed. I just wish the translator (I read it in French) had used footnotes to explain points of culture/habits/preconceptions/mythology, etc. Knowing that some of the nuances, connotations and inferences passed me by is frustrating...
Scenery from Pyhätunturi in Pyhä-Luosto Nationalpark in Finland from Jaro Larnos via Wikimedia

Have started Fishing for the Little Pike, set in Finnish Eastern Lapland. Elina needs to catch the last surviving pike in what's left of the lake at the end of summer, when it has turned into marshes. The descriptions of marshes, mosquitoes and horseflies are giving me nightmares. Contrary supernatural beings are starting to appear. This should be fun 😏

Picture of Hietasaari, Lake Saimaa by Timo Saarinen, via Wikimedia Commons

The perfect book to ease myself into nonfiction November, this fictional story of American‘s first female serial killer. Following her from her childhood in Norway and her immigrant experience. Born this way or made this way? To me she seems extremely religious, but that‘s probably the times. She‘s also a woman in a man‘s world.

At first I was sceptical about the new Nobel Prize Winner (*cough* diversity *cough*), but this book, even though small in page numbers, is magnificent. Ghostsory, Historical Fiction, Family Drama, Lovestory - all this in a stream of consciousness that left me breathless. The story switches between point of views and time periods. If you want to know if you're ready for Ulysses, try this book first.

Those 75 pages pack a punch! The writing repeats itself, and revisits, loops and circles around the main traumatic event(s) - drownings in the local fjord - in a very effective stream-of-consciousness style with a hint of magical realism. Clearly not to everyone's tastes, but I liked it.

photo of Trondheim fjord from Orcaborealis, Wikimedia