Looking forward to this next reading stack. 🤓

More #Penguin Mini‘s for my library! I just can't get enough it seems. This is the #vintageminis box set!!! I'm also a sucker for #boxsets. 😝🤓

I‘ve been on a Georges Simenon kick ever since I read Dirty Snow last month. Not sure how I never heard of him considering all the books he's written (@ 400?!) plus his celebrity writer status while he was alive. I haven't read any of his Maigret series yet, but I'm getting into his Romans Dur's. Six read and seemingly endless to go.

I've always heard Nabokov wrote his novels on notecards and when I saw this edition, to see and read it in his process, I had to purchase it!

Picked this up at The Strand yesterday. 😙🤓

I chose this Argentinian because I read somewhere he had a 10% chance, i.e. a long shot, of winning the Nobel literature prize this year and he wrote mainly novellas. I love short books so I picked up GHOSTS. I couldn't make heads or tails of it. But they are so short, I decided to try another one. This one because it was rated the highest and Roberto Bolano wrote the intro. I can't say I liked it. Anyone fans here who can recommend a good one?

I forgot who on Litsy got me onto bookhub but here's a sale I was finally able to partake in. So I thought I'd share it.

contd :
"... the journey it had made, and had still to make, pursued its mysterious and dreadful end; and carried, heavy with weeping and bitterness, the heart along."

"Men spoke of how the heart broke up but never spoke of how the soul hung speechless in the pause, the void, the terror between the living and the dead... Once there, there was no turning back; once there, the soul remembered, though the heart sometimes forgot. For the world called to the heart, which stammered to reply; life, and love, and revelry, and most falsely, hope, called the forgetful, the human heart. Only the soul, obsessed w/ the...

"Only recently have I realized the degree to which these books were my religious texts and their unavowed intent was to teach me the secrets of reality, in short to explain the meaning of life."

"Books can be so utterly powerful to someone quite vulnerable in their teens, the eyes clouded with hormones, and a wistful heart looking for an artistic Eden far from the shovel and hoe, the locker room slugfests, the urge to find a girl other than your sister who actually reads books."

"Salt is added to dried rose petals with the perfume and spices, when we store them away in covered jars, the summers of our past."

"... he was what made the days worth confronting."

'Somebody', said Jacques, 'your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour... for the lack of it.'

"And they sat, all three, for almost an hour waiting for dinner, motionless, merely exchanging a word here and there, any word, however pointless or trite, as though it was secretly dangerous to let the stillness continue for too long, to allow the air of this death-haunted room to congeal into silence."

how sad, I only just discovered his work...
Loved Jesus'' Son.
R.I.P.

I just love these little mini modern penguin classics. A great FSF short story too!

I realized that carelessness can govern our lives, but it does not provide us with any arguments in its defense.

Abolutely loved this collection of short stories. It was a Litsy discovery thanks to a recommendation from @MimiBKNY during a conversation about Raymond Carver, so mucho thx! I can see the comparisons. She really is as good. If you like him, Lucia Berlin is definitely worth a try. For those who dislike sad or downer stories, this won't be for you.

Latest #Bookhaul. Started Lucia Berlin, so far so good!

A tad disappointed with this one. A very easy read, some good endings, but utilizes backstory too much to get to the final event.

"You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.
...
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise."

"At night Nenny and I can hear when Earl comes home from work. First the click and whine of the car door opening, then the scrape of concrete, the excited tinkling of dog tags, followed by the heavy jingling of keys, and finally the moan of the wooden door as it opens and lets loose it's sigh of dampness."

Sunday afternoon doing some read along with Jeremy Irons on BBC 4.

"By most Januaries, when the snow had deepened, the valley seemed stopped with the perpetual silence, but as a matter of fact it was often filled with the rumble of trains and the choirs of distant wolves and the nearer mad jibbering of coyotes."

RIP. 😢😢

Nobel in Literature? Congrats anyhow and this was a fun read!

I was in Lower Manhattan this afternoon and thought I would read a bit in Union Square because it was nice out. Instead, I detoured to the Strand. I had told myself to pause on buying books until I clear some of my TBR, but NO, I wouldn't listen. I can never leave there empty handed.
#bookhaul #getindie

I was in Lower Manhattan this afternoon and thought I would read a bit in Union Square because it was nice out. Instead, I detoured to the Strand. I had told myself to pause on buying books until I clear some off my TBR, but NO, I wouldn't listen. I can never leave there empty handed.
#bookhaul #getindie

Here's another stack of #madeintoamovie
These are some of my favorite lit books made to films. Not all the film adaptions were great, but The Unbearable Lightness of Being was a winner.
#somethingforSept

#madeintoamovie Here's a batch of film noirs / thrillers. You can never go wrong with Chandler or Cain, but I say Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective (more a teleplay) is the best TV show ever made. The BBC one with Michael Gambon and not the horrible film remake with R. Downey Jr. The visuals may be dated now, but the story is unbelievably well told. Wide emotions from funny to dark to brooding to heart-wrenching. Watch it, u won't be sorry.

#madeintoamovie Here's a batch of film noirs / thrillers. You can never go wrong with Chandler or Cain, but I say Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective (more a teleplay) is the best TV show ever made. The BBC one with Michael Gambon and not the horrible film remake with R. Downey Jr. The visuals may be dated now, but the story is unbelievably well told. Wide emotions from funny to dark to brooding to heart-wrenching. Watch it, u won't be sorry.

A delicate, touchingly told story of the immigrant experience in America. Another impressive book by her. Loved her SS, this was my first novel. The Lowland will now move higher own my TBR stack!

"Remember that you and I made this journey, that we went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go."

#tbrtuesday : Stack of photo books to get through. Will likely get mesmerized by the pictures and forget about the text. I don't think any of them were in the Litsy DB. But Volume I of the History of the Photobook is a good start. Or just go to your friendly bookstore and browse at the photo section. That's usually where I visit last before I leave.

This is Bradbury's Royal typewriter. I first saw it in a repair shop when I had to get my IBM Selectric fixed. The repairman thought I'd be impressed. I was. I took a photo of it then, but I couldn't find it for this post. I got this online. It was bought by a well-known collector after his death. I had no idea people collected typewriters at the time and it, regretfully😜, started me collecting these heavy machines for a while. Happy Bday R.B.!

"It would appear, he often used to say to himself, that children never ask themselves any questions. Many years afterwards, we attempt to solve puzzles that were not mysteries at the time and we try to decipher half-obliterated letters from a language that is too old and whose alphabet we don't even know."

This atmospherically falls in the film noir genre which I'm always a fan & my 2nd Modiano book. Unfortunately when this story reached it's end, it went over my head. Unlike in Missing Person, I enjoyed the unresolved ending. Here, I can't say such. Maybe it was a different translator, but I enjoyed the text less overall, even though it had great mood. I felt there was something in it that was just slightly out of reach. May try a reread 1 day.

#recommendsday I absolutely loved this book when I read it a few years ago before he died. The writing is beautiful. On a sentence to sentence level, this book is one of the tops. The funny thing is that this is the only book I like of his. I've tried some others and couldn't get into them for some reason or other. Stylistically this seems to be the standout for me.

"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."

Honestly, I never thought I would read a book about running, let alone finish one, but it was Murakami so I did. It was a quick and enjoyable read. I like the parallels he points out between writing and running which made it interesting for me.

There were many favorable posts on Litsy for this book. I seldom read poetry and if I do, it's usually in free verse. This fit the bill so I decided to give it a try. It did not disappoint. I can see why everyone on here loves it. I think this was my first official Litsy find!

After reading Patrick Modiano, and thinking whether his book was an existential detective story, I couldn't help think of Paul Auster.  So I pulled out my old copy of the New York Trilogy and gave it a read. I forgot how much I like Auster and am surprised I don't read more of his work than I have., only this and Music of Chance. Clever and enjoyable metafiction. As for the comparison read, PM's Missing Person was not metafiction. His approach is

From: The Locked Room.

This is an odd little book. Very quickly I realized this was one of those mysteries that wouldn't be resolved. Surprisingly, when I reached the end, I wasn't annoyed, upset, or disappointed. Somehow, I still rather enjoyed it and not quite sure why. Now, I'm intrigued to read more of Modiano to see if he can do it again. Anyone know his work and have suggestions?

A quick and entertaining read of the legendary war photographer's time in WWII in his own words and photographs. It's told simply and matter-of-factly without much sentimentality or glorification, yet poignant in certain moments. A must for Robert Capa fans.

Newly acquired TBR and TBRR (reread) stack.

Unfortunately this disappointed, mostly because I loved Just Kids so much and had high expectations. If you're a Patti Smith fan, still worth a read, but if you're new to her, I recommend starting with Just Kids.

Writer's debris. :))