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ampersunder

ampersunder

Joined September 2016

Fearful only of having nothing to read.
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There There: A novel by Tommy Orange
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Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor
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Perfection Of The Morning by Sharon Butala
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ampersunder
The Course of Love: A Novel | Alain de Botton
Pickpick

Wonderful book. I feel like there is a bit of a cheat going on with the story of a husband's personal development being interwoven with italicized passages providing a sort of objective, omniscient, generalizing perspective of this single couple's experience, but I really enjoyed it anyway.

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Nine Island | Jane Alison
Pickpick

Excellent ("non-fiction") novel about an older woman dealing with her singleness, caring for her elderly cat, living in an aging building of concrete and glass, connecting with neighbours, feeding a stranded duck, and translating Ovid in Miami Beach.

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Nine Island | Jane Alison
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One of life's great pleasures: reading in bed on a Sunday night, successfully not thinking about what Monday brings.

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ampersunder
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Pickpick

Excellent book of essays dealing with feminism, fat shaming, rape jokes, trolls, and much much more.

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ampersunder
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I took this photo at the bookstore because I was not going to buy the book, but then I bought the book and now I can share this with you. So much reading to be done!

10 likes2 stack adds
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The Course of Love: A Novel | Alain de Botton
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This evening's unwieldy stack of books.

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ampersunder
Swing Time | Zadie Smith
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Killing some time in the sunshine.

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Swing Time | Zadie Smith
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Leaving today for a week in Florida. I started Zadie Smith's new novel this morning to make sure I wanted to bring it along, and hell yeah I do!

9 likes1 stack add
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Razor Girl | Carl Hiaasen
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Now that I'm back from Ireland, it's time for a zany Floridian romp of a novel leading up to our trip to Tampa & Punta Gorda next week.

7 likes1 stack add
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Siracusa | Delia Ephron
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Last meal in Galway, last pages of Siracusa.

8 likes1 stack add
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Siracusa | Delia Ephron
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I had actual humans for company at dinner tonight, so now I'm just reading in my cozy hotel bed. 📖

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Siracusa | Delia Ephron
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Another night in Galway, another drink, another few dozen pages of Siracusa.

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Siracusa | Delia Ephron
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Reading alone in the brightest corner of a noisy bar while drinking an excellent Irish lager is very much my idea of a good time.

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Siracusa | Delia Ephron
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Tonight's dinner companion in Galway.

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Hot Milk | Deborah Levy
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Tonight's dinner companion

4 likes1 stack add
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Infinite Jest | David Foster Wallace
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Awesome bookstore in Galway, Ireland -- Charlie Byrne's Bookshop. Could've spent hours there this evening, but had to cut myself off.

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ampersunder
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Sunday night reading in bed.

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The Search | C. P. Snow
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Today I happened to be near my favourite used book store in Canada (my absolute favourite one is in Jacksonville FL), so I came home with a short stack. 📚

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Pickpick

Such a fun read! Once I started, it was so hard to put down. More on the book in my newsletter:
http://tinyletter.com/popscratch/

meghandrrns Loved this book! 8y
8 likes1 comment
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Hopper | Mark Strand
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Great little book by a great poet about a handful of Hopper's paintings. No complicated art criticism or theory -- just brief essays about the visual language of the pictures. Strand and Hopper are a perfect pair.

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I ❤️the public library.

6 likes1 stack add
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H is for Hawk | Helen Macdonald
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Very good. No spoilers or whatever, but after a rough patch in the middle, the ending was very satisfying.

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ampersunder
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Pickpick

Engaging and lovely prose. More sad and serious than I usually like my YA, but an enjoyable read nonetheless.

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H is for Hawk | Helen Macdonald
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I usually read hardcovers with their jacket off (unless they're library copies of course), but I'll put it back on to take a photo! This book is strangely absorbing.

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ampersunder
Pickpick

Finished this book today after reading it slowly and lovingly for months. I can't imagine a better book on storytelling.

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Hopper | Mark Strand
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I love me some Hopper, and Mark Strand isn't bad. 😁

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Less Than Angels | Barbara Pym
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Love Barbara Pym so much. I read this one years ago and I can't believe how much of it I remember. (Granted, there's some overlap & similarities with her other books.) Great writing, great characters, brilliant insights into the human condition.

6 likes1 stack add
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Less Than Angels | Barbara Pym

"Curiosity has its pains as well as its pleasures, and the bitterest of its pains must surely be the inability to follow up everything to its conclusion."

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ampersunder
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Visited a new-to-me bookstore near work today. They had an amazing selection of new & used, but I only had 20 minutes. Looking forward to another trip!

6 likes1 comment
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Between the World and Me | Ta-Nehisi Coates

"There is no uplifting way to say this. I have no praise anthems, nor old Negro spirituals. The spirit and the soul are the body and brain, which are destructible -- that is precisely why they are so precious. And the soul did not escape. The spirit did not steal away on gospel wings. The soul was the body that fed the tobacco, and the spirit was the blood that watered the cotton, and these created the first fruits of the American garden."

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Between the World and Me | Ta-Nehisi Coates

"In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body -- it is heritage. Enslavement was not merely the antiseptic borrowing of labor -- it is not so easy to get a human being to commit their body against its own elemental interest. And so enslavement must be casual wrath and random manglings, the gashing of heads and brains blown out over the river as the body seeks to escape. It must be rape so regular as to be industrial."

3 likes1 stack add
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Reading this, finally, after owning the book for years. Feels a bit like an artefact -- it's not scientific literature, not pop science, and not quite a elegant marrying of the two. The stories are fascinating, and I find myself wanting more personal history about the patients.

5 likes2 stack adds
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All at Sea: A Memoir | Decca Aitkenhead
Pickpick

An honest, clear-eyed memoir of the intricacies of dealing with sudden loss. No sentimental heartstring-tugging here. Aitkenhead pays homage to the life of her partner and works through her grief in the nine months following his death.

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Uprooted | Naomi Novik
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Re-reading one of my all-time favourite books on a sunny Saturday.

8 likes1 stack add
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Between the World and Me | Ta-Nehisi Coates
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The best Friday night before a long weekend is a Friday night reading by the setting sun with a drink in hand!

BookishMarginalia Lovely pic! 8y
MrBook 😎👌🏻 8y
9 likes2 comments
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Between the World and Me | Ta-Nehisi Coates
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This evening: required reading.

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All at Sea: A Memoir | Decca Aitkenhead
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New day, new book. Twenty pages in and my heart is already breaking.

5 likes1 stack add
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Pickpick

Phew! I confess that once the war ends (spoiler alert?!) I skimmed through some of the bits about the League of Nations, but V. B. ends the book on a strong note -- becoming a published writer and making a difficult but important personal decision. And now I'm excited to see the film!

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"In spite of the feminine family tradition and the relentless social pressure which had placed an artificial emphasis on marriage for all the women born, like myself, in the eighteen-nineties, I had always held and still believed it to be irrelevant to the main purpose of life." V. B. would be disappointed in how common this tradition and pressure remain in 2016.

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Mehso-so

So glad to be done with this finally. That's all.

1 like1 stack add
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My go-to book for eating alone in restaurants this week.

intellrecreate And a good pick for WWI's centennial years! 8y
6 likes1 stack add1 comment
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The Seed Collectors | Scarlett Thomas
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Started this book last night, but I'm leaving town for a week, so it's time to switch over to the ebook. So far, it's no Our Tragic Universe (my favourite).

4 likes1 stack add
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Saturday morning reading. Novels about fan fiction writers are too few and far between. They make me miss my Sailor Moon and Pride & Prejudice fic writing days.

7 likes2 stack adds
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Modern Lovers | Emma Straub
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"Timing was everything -- that was more and more obvious the older you got, when you finally understood that the universe wasn't held together in any way that made sense. ... There was no fate. Life was just happenstance and luck, bound together by the desire for order. Elizabeth understood why so many people believed in God -- it was for precisely this reason, so they'd never have to close their eyes and think, What the fuck did I do to my life?"