Welcome to Litsy!

Remember what I read to you in the first class, that excerpt from Kafka's letter?" Michael closed his eyes and quoted from memory: " "I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If he book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading it for? "

Evocatively and calculatingly told, the writing in here is sublime. Slow-revealing storylines were interesting, but too many questions were left unanswered...

Three families live in an elegant residential building. One member in each makes a heart-wrenching confession and paints a vivid and diverse image of Israeli society. I was most touched by the third story, so poignant and heartbreaking.

"The three floors of the psyche do not exist inside us at all! Absolutely not! They exist in the air between us and someone else, in the space between our mouths and the ears we are telling our story to."

#Alphabetgame #LetterW @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

I fell under the spell of this novel, an odd romance in a British controlled pre-Israel full of WW2 refugees, cultural mixtures, and all the conflicting unsettled forces.

Other special W‘s:
Ward Six and Other Stories-Anton Chekhov
The Warmth of Other Suns-Isabel Wilkerson
We Have Always Lived in the Castle-Shirley Jackson
Woman of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante-Lily Tuck

Casey helped me read a comic from my Litsy stack before bed last night. I‘m gonna have to seek out Rutu Modan‘s short comics now, because this was very well done. I also really appreciated the interview at the end for the insight it gave me into the Israeli comics scene.

I loved this just as much upon rereading as I did 15 years ago when the English translation (from Hebrew by Noah Stollman) first came out. It‘s been so long that I didn‘t even remember what happened… That‘s a bonus! Because it‘s a pageturner with surprises, about ordinary people in Tel Aviv. Nuanced character development, all the feels, & absolutely gorgeous clear-line artwork, similar to the style in Tintin comics.

If she hadn‘t died at fifty, she might have lived to be a hundred.

I just came across this book which I received from a member of #LibraryThing over ten years ago! I thought it was about time to read it so I began it today for a LibraryThing challenge to read a book by an #Israeli or Palestinian author.

A light pick. This book is comprised of three stories, each following a family on different floors of an apartment building in Tel Aviv. They are told almost like confessionals, with a resident from each apartment sharing their story to "you", a friend, a confidant, or a deceased husband. Like you, these confidants don't interact or reply and they feel a bit contrived.

Story one showed a family with two children and how they all interacted⬇️