#bfcr3 only one week left! I had a HUGE mood boost this week when I was given a clean bill of health after 3 years of post-op cancer checkups. Wahoo!!! So I have a lot more energy/enthusiasm than I've had in AGES and I'm getting much more active. I even ran 3x this week!! 😁 @wanderinglynn @Emilymdxn @Megabooks @Tineke @tjwill @cewilf @cobwebmoth @KathyWheeler @TheEllieMo @guinsgirlreads

There are 16 weeks left until 2020, and this year my focus was on minority/translated: authors of color, LGBTQIA+ authors, women authors, indigenous authors, authors in translation. I have another 4 books I want to get to for this theme, so I planned them out to stay on schedule. 2020 will be about reading the standards for lit majors, since I can count the # I've already read on one hand 😬 what does everyone have planned for the rest of 2019?

The group that put this together requested short essays from anyone who identified -- partially or wholly -- as Aboriginal. They got 120+ submissions and kept around half of them. They are not always well written, but they are all extremely important. I laughed with them, was appalled, cheered for them, was moved to tears. Read this collection. It's not long. Fit it in by the end of the year. It works for #readharder 2019. #indigenous #oceania

Has anyone here ever read Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer? He has a brief chapter about story structure, and points out nonlinear narrative structures that, when drawn, clearly come from nature: spirals, anemones, neurons. But it ends there. "Meander Spiral Explode" is a brilliantly clear deep-dive into this idea, exploring narrative shapes (SEPARATE from plot/character development), how to spot them, and what they do to "create magic on the page."

Yay congrats again @GrilledCheeseSamurai !!! #SixDigitSamurai is running til Oct 1 and involves being sent books from your TBR, so don't miss out Littens! @Lana1 is one of my newer followers who is also newish to Litsy...hello! 👋🏻 Favorite read of 2019 is tagged. This book is incredibly well written, and Roy has somehow almost created a new dialect of English in the language of the narrative...it's unlike anything I've read before. 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

I have officially heard from three different medical professionals that I'm "probably fine" with regard to my cancer, now that I'm 3 years out post-op with no funny symptoms. OMG!!! Could come back later, "but it's unlikely." Is it too premature to celebrate? Cuz I am manic!! It hasn't felt this easy to breathe in years!!!

This book has been on my TBR ever since seeing the #ownvoices #oceania prompt on the #readharder challenge. Finally feels like a good time to dive into it. Anyone read this yet? #readaroundtheworld #indigenous #australia

Ploughed through this one in 3 days, though I had hoped to finish it in August. Ah well, close enough!

#bfcr3 did better this week. I'm settling into mindsets that better support my desired habits, regardless of my mood. @wanderinglynn @Emilymdxn @Megabooks @Tineke @tjwill @cewilf @cobwebmoth @KathyWheeler @TheEllieMo @guinsgirlreads

Library haul! I am likely going to have a LOOOT of reading time over the next two weeks, so I stocked up. 😊 #catherbuddyread #1001books #pulitzerbio #readaroundtheworld #argentina #israel #nigeria #libya

Does anyone know of any September reading challenges going on? I couldn't find anything on the @Litsyhappenings feed. 🤔

Ha! 🤣

Barnes and Noble has tables and tables of 50% off books for the next three days, and it includes a lot of titles from their classics series. Y'all, this was the first book that woke up my brain to the sorts of layered meaning literature is capable of. I was 16. It is still at the top of my list. It only cost me $5 and is the translation from the brilliant Constance Garnett. I can't even right now. ♥️😭♥️😭♥️😭

It's my Friday today and I could not be more ready! The last five days at work have been absurdly stressful. Bleh! But I have nothing scheduled for my "weekend" so I should be able to recharge the batteries and hopefully get on better #bfcr3 track, once I can decompress. Journaling 3/3, yoga 1/1, still getting daily caffeine to survive.

Ugh. I mean, I get it, people have incorrect notions of what Native Americans are "capable of," but it still seems gross to me that an author might need to point out that the Incas showcased the ability to "keep track of their wide-flung possessions." ? Like, would they "possess" it if they couldn't govern it? Probably not!

SHOWING OFF HOW MANY NAMES YOU KNOW FOR A SINGLE HISTORICAL FIGURE IS NOT AN ENGAGING NARRATIVE, MR CATLOS. Christ Almighty, I am about to chuck this confusing quagmire of trivia factoids across the room! BAIL! So hard!

#bfcr3 a wave of depression has totally wrecked me this week. The daily caffeine keeps me acting like a normal human being at work, so there you have it. But hopefully the journaling and yoga will help me process the depression before it becomes a months-long rut! @wanderinglynn @Emilymdxn @Megabooks @Tineke @tjwill @cewilf @cobwebmoth @KathyWheeler @TheEllieMo @guinsgirlreads

#BFCr3 week 2 summary:I moved this week, so no yoga or reading, but I had 3 days of serious physical activity, so I'm not upset 😊 @wanderinglynn @Emilymdxn @Megabooks @Tineke @cewilf @tjwill @cobwebmoth @TheEllieMo @guinsgirlreads @KathyWheeler

All moved! Now excuse me while I hobble around like a centenarian for the next week 🤣

Moving tomorrow, so I'm prepping the plant babies...so excited, so nervous!!

Wait. Rulers ACTUALLY did this?!?! I thought it was just fictitious embellishment!! 😱

It's for research. I SWEAR I'm not biting off more than I can chew! 😂 #libraryhaul

I love it when fiction gets history right. I love it even more when it is relatively obscure history. #china #readaroundtheworld #readingintranslation #HSreadathon

@wanderinglynn @Emilymdxn @Megabooks @cobwebmoth @KathyWheeler @Tineke @tjwill @cewilf @TheEllieMo @guinsgirlreads #bfcr3 week 1! I learned that sugar free electrolyte drinks curb my caffeine cravings and that fruit 2x/day curbs sugar cravings. Yay progress! Adding a few new items to work toward a healthier/saner life! #goteam

And I say GOOD-BYE to this week, thank you very much. Happy Friday, Litsy family!! I just got off work at midnight local time (I work second shift at a rehearsal facility), and I have a 3 day weekend ahead of me, and TINY GODS I need it.

Nope. #WITmonth #Japan #readaroundtheworld #BFCr3

#BFCr3 Well guys, as expected, I'm REALLY not doing well with my goal of no caffeine and no sugar. As of Sunday, I've only succeeded 2 of the 5 days. But today, I drank only half of a coffee, so maybe I'm getting somewhere? In other news, I'm blasting through my “6 books read during 6 weeks“ goal like there's no tomorrow! I might reconsider my goals on Saturday and update them to include exercise? Not sure.

Coming-of-age novels about girls are usually written in rosy, nostalgic style, and this boarding school novel is no different. What's different is how these girls come of age: rather than maturing and accepting responsibility, this documents the transformation of girls who innocently/thoughtlessly parrot their parents' genocidal rhetoric into women who have internalized the rhetoric as their own. 👇👇👇

When you head to the library and browse specifically for #WITmonth ♥️ #bookhaul #HSreadathon @rmaclean4 see any that look good? 🙂 I've heard great things about most of these so I'm excited to dig in!

#BFCr3 book 1/6 is done, and with it I finished this series! Fluffy, predictable high fantasy. Good for my mood the last couple days. I spectacularly failed at the no caffeine/sugar goal yesterday because I was having a rough go at it. Better today...still have a headache though. 😥 I'm sure it'll go away soon though! #HSreadathon

Drinking Klarbrunn and reading the fluffy second volume of The Belgariad while I try not to die from sugar and caffeine withdrawal. #BFCr3, day 1, here we go! #HSreadathon @Megabooks @Tineke @tjwill @cewilf @cobwebmoth @KathyWheeler @TheEllieMo @guinsgirlreads @Emilymdxn

Entertaining, but a bit of a one trick pony that struggled to support itself over 500 pages. I learned less from it than I had hoped to, but laughed more often. Meh. 🤷🏻‍♀️ #HSreadathon

@wanderinglynn I just signed up for #BFCR3! No coffee, no sugar, and reading 6 books are my goals! Fingers crossed--my coffee/sugar habits are pretty bad! 😬

This is the thesis statement of this book, I'm not kidding 😂 Guys, this is SO FUN TO READ. Mary Beard loves Roman history and clearly is NOT impressed with self-promoting historians from ANY period and I am incessantly giggling at her snark. #HSreadathon

WOOLLY BEAR!!! What an auspicious start to August! ♥️☀️

Saw this in the Litsy feed and had to give it a go. What a stress-busting way to start the day! 😍

Just signed up for the #HSreadathon! https://bit.ly/2SZAlsq Looking forward to spending my quiet August trying to blast through my TBR pile...but guys, do you have any idea how many #chunksters are on said pile? Or how much my pile blew up after the local bookstore decided to move and made all their books $2 to lighten the load? These are just the TBRs I have WITHIN ARMS REACH! 😆 😆 😆

When I asked which #chunkster to read for the rest of the summer, the votes overwhelmingly came back in favor of Don Quixote! 🎉 🎉 🎉 Edith Grossman is a personal hero of mine, and her translation of DQ (of course) got gushing reviews, so that's the edition I'm reading 😁 My weekend is today/tomorrow, so I'll definitely be diving in before I'm back at work!

Things that are really embarrassing -- I somehow slept through the ENTIRETY of my education on Ancient Rome as a young adult. 😬 Since I know nothing about it beyond “et tu, Brute“ and I'm hankering for a nonfiction read, I picked this book up from the library today. Mary Beard is “happily of my generation“ in her interest in the life of the common citizen and gender studies, so I'm SUPER stoked to see what she says.

The author spent most of his life working with the tribes of Pakistan and Afghanistan--the people we refer to as “terrorists.“ So I was excited to find a novel that showed their traditions, cultures, and identities. But UGH. There was no plot, the “great human emotions“ this book lauds were told to the reader instead of being shown, and the tone of the whole thing was moralistic and patronizing. #Pakistan #readaroundtheworld #readingintranslation

LOL apparently I seriously underestimated how much I would read this year...hit my 2019 goal at the end of July?? 🤣🤣

I mean, I wouldn't expect even the majority of people who read this bitty-but-brilliant book to like it, but it feels so important, so relevant (written in 1990!!), and so mind-blowing that I want to thrust a copy of this book into the hands of every person I pass on the street and shout into their faces, “READ THIS BOOK. READ THIS BOOK RIGHT MEOW.“ #Argentina #readaroundtheworld #readingintranslation #readharder

I know César Aira has a reputation of being surreal to the point of making the most abstract-loving literary critics throw their hands up in bewilderment, but he's kinda blowing my mind. Like, a lot. #Argentina #readaroundtheworld #readingintranslation #readharder

It's been about 6 months since I slogged through a long book, and I wouldn't mind settling in with one for the rest of the summer...do any of these seem like particularly good choices?

1) Underworld by Don DeLillo
2) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
3) 2666 by Roberto Bolano
4) Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
5) Jerusalem by Alan Moore
6) The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu

Whoa. What a twisty, bizarre, powerful book. Ondjaki has serious literary teeth. It started strong and got better as it went. #Angola #readaroundtheworld #readharder

I see descriptions like this often enough that it's got me thinking about starting up a literary cooking hobby... 🤔

Super interesting and surprisingly madcap book about/by an author from #Angola #readaroundtheworld #readingintranslation #readharder