nora 🍐
@pear-jelly
Seasonal reader, Comyns head, spinsterlit, midcentury women writers, heritage publishing and secondhand bookshopping #spinsterseptember 🇮🇪 Dublin
So weird was just reading about exactly this in Animal Joy by Nuar Alsadir. Have you read it? Might help you with your project. I relate with your feeling that aging is dimming us down but i suspect the era we live in plays a bigger role. Maybe this numbing is like a self defense mechanism?
Mid-year check-in with my fave books I read in the first 6 months of 2026 📚While it’s been an interesting year so far it’s also been poor in books i rated 5 stars. Only The Years, Crazy Genie & my reread of the Bell Jar qualified. This collection by Flannery O’Connor left also an impression #booksky
Wasn’t looking to check out the new transl. coming this Oct but after reading this in the intro of my copy: “Ruth L. C. Simms tends at times […] to paraphrase, to create smoother transitions where the original might seem excessively spare”, i’m now curious to see if it aligns with Bioy’s style 👀
Thanks! I just rearranged it because i removed all of my witmonth books to take a picture so here’s a shot of my whole tbr bookcase just for you while it’s tidy-ish (won’t last long 🙈)
Starting The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Biot Casares (tr. Ruth L. C. Smith) @nyrb-imprints.bsky.social #booksky
“While reading, I sometimes stumble upon a passage so evocative it spills over the edge of my intellect, and the surplus is transformed into a bodily sensation that compels me to slam the book shut, stand up, walk around.” — Nuar Alsadir, Animal Joy @fitzcarraldoeds.bsky.social #booksky
I can see you liking this one! Did you spot that archipelago is releasing another title of hers this autumn? Want! (thanks 😺)
Currently reading 📖 Dawn takes place over the course of 1 night as the police raids a house. Soysal creates a tense atmosphere of paranoia by flitting between POVs of those present that night. A gripping portrayal of political oppression, class identity & gender dynamics in 1970s Turkey #booksky
It’s baffling to me that as a Proust translator you are in an intimate relationship w/ his words & yet decide to turn to AI. The man repeated time & time again that an imitation of style indicates shallowness. And what is AI if not a regurgitation of “banalités de formes acquises par l’imitation”
The books I’m hoping to spend some time with in July (probably too ambitious a tbr for my 🐌 paced reading but one can dream 💭 ) #booksky #readingpilgrimage #nyrbwomen26
I often feel that Pym is a little mean-spirited towards her aging single female protagonists. I read that she wasn’t too happy about her singlehood & loved being in love, I wonder if there are some complicated self-deprecating feelings behind all her spinsters. Need to read this biog! #nyrbwomen26
Popped into IMMA to see the Cecilia Vicuña exhibition before it closes (Sunday July 5). Ecofeminism, eroticism, poetry and rage against corporate greed. So invigorating! (And a surprise, Leonora Carrington’s little golden dragon, a nod to the connexion the 2 women made when they met in the 60s)
Joining in with #nyrbwomen26 July read 📖 this will be my 2nd Pym (after Excellent Women), slightly apprehensive as I’ve not felt in the mood for my midcentury ladies lately. Hope this will get me back on track #booksky
“Being pleased doesn’t strike me as the appropriate response to the idea of sneaking off to a love nest with your lover,” said Billy. “What is the appropriate response?” I said. “Oh,” Billy said, her voice now blithe, “sorrow, guilt, horror, anticipation.” — Another Marvelous thing, Laurie Colwin
Half way through Sun City #nyrbwomen26 this has such an end of time vibes. It is set in an old folks home in Florida, a fertile playground for Jansson and her beloved themes of isolation, alienation and human pettiness.
@joiedevivre9.bsky.social @ofbooksandbikes.bsky.social a possible rec for you two, an “unclassifiable” essay on the ways trauma fractures reality, language, form and the self.
1st week with Crazy Genie by Inès Cagnati #nyrbwomen26 / on my mind, a previous nyrbwomen read, Lies & Sorcery, where love-starved daughters are clinging to their emotionally absent mothers for any scraps of attention 💔 those nonlinear vignettes and their beautiful seasonality… 1/2