J Booksy

@jbooksy

Here to share books I've read & liked. Mostly.

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J Booksy@jbooksy· 1d

Very scatalogical. 1863, Irish girl Bessy takes a job at a run-down Scottish castle, where everyone turns out to have secrets aplenty, including Bessy. Bawdy talk, attics, ghosts, letters, journals, nasty mums, cliffhangers, prostitution, mysterious deaths, farts, genitals, slang. #booksky

Cover of The Observations by Jane Harris w a photo of a woman, her head bent & face obscured, wearing Victorian-era underclothes and a corset, whose strings she is tightening. The photo is overlaid with rows of cursive handwriting and the glare from the camera flash.

J Booksy@jbooksy· 6d

Not totally sure what I read. Woman flies to Georgia (the country) to find a lost dog. A romance? History of Georgia? Foodie novel? How not to be an Ugly American (while still being one)? Midlife crisis for married women w $$ who want to flee family guilt-free? Yeah, the last one. #booksky

Cover of A Dog in Georgia by Lauren Grodstein, with an illustration in oranges and yellow of many multi-story European city buildings jammed next to each other in a row, with various dogs wandering this way and that in front of them, and one woman bending to pet one dog while a man, far left, walks toward the edge of the picture.

J Booksy@jbooksy· 14d

Re-read. Laurence & Hilary and Gina & Fergus and their kids are all friends. Fergus (closeted?) leaves Gina and their daughter. Distraught, Gina leans heavily on her friends, esp Laurence. You can see where that's going. Everybody's lives upended. Gina's mum Vi & her fella Dan: delightful. #booksky

Cover of The Best of Friends by Joanna Trollope, with a small illustration of a wooden bench in a garden.

(There is a bench in Gina & Fergus' garden that people look at a lot.)

J Booksy@jbooksy· 17d

Odd little book. Took me a bit to get into it, then hooked. Daughter of famous punk & rock stars who are messed up & absent, grandmother is controlling, gets addicted to men who are bad ideas, can't feel physical pain. Is the last man another bad idea who understands her, or is he worse? #booksky

Cover of I Fear My Pain Interests You, by Stephanie LaCava, with a black & white photo of an after-party scene: a woman wearing a dark dress w a lace short sleeve and floral thigh-high stockinged is lying draped over the edge of a bed, her arm trailing to the floor, which is littered with spent corks from champagne bottles, cigarette butts, and a glass of some liquid.

J Booksy@jbooksy· 26d

Multi-POV mystical tale of 2 women who go to a hippieish music festival in the Andes, meet a group of people, and all decide to journey higher in the mtns for the solstice. Music, dance, drums, taxidermy, shamanism, absent fathers, backwards sleepwalking, fog, transformation, separation. #booksky

Cover of Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun, by Mónica Ojeda, translated by Sarah Booker. With an illustration of a volcano erupting with pink lava against a pink sky with white condors and stars.

J Booksy@jbooksy· Jul 17

Picked this up again after many years, and whew, it's hard to take. All the n* words. All over the place. And when Huck makes fun of Jim. And Tom's stupid plots at the end when he knows Jim is free. A few pages when Huck & Jim were on the raft were bucolic & wonderful. Otherwise . . . #booksky

Cover of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, with an illustration of a Black man standing on a raft, propelling it with a pole down a river, while a young white boy wearing a straw hat sits on the raft in front of him.

J Booksy@jbooksy· Jul 3

Intense, dense, dreamlike. Short stories, some longer, about people on the fringes--addicts, vets, trans, the abused, forgotten, overlooked--confronting the limits and mysteries of the body, the great equalizer, even as it separates us. #booksky

Cover of First, Body, by Melanie Rae Thon, with a black & white photo tinged blue of a shirtless man leaning back, arching his back, lifting his chin.

J Booksy@jbooksy· Jun 26

1st-person, told by Antara of her adult life w Alzheimer's mother Tara whom she resents. Backstory chapters of her childhood when she was abandoned by father, then mother, sent to live w abusive nuns, etc, are well-told. Present-day wanders. Every sentence is a complaint. #booksky

Cover of Burnt Sugar, by Avni Doshi, with a photo tinged with green of a young woman's face mostly hidden in a pillow, one eye looking up at the viewer.

J Booksy@jbooksy· Jun 24

I have struck gold. For free.

A stack of 8 movies:
1. Excalibur
2. A Woman's Life (French)
3. Run Lola Run (German)
4. Nói (Icelandic)
5. La Dolce Vita (Italian)
6. Planet Earth: The Complete Series
7. Down By Law
8. Wallander, Series 1.

J Booksy@jbooksy· Jun 20

Got this yesterday from a very excellent used book store for $1.

Cover of Manchild in the Promised Land: A Modern Classic of the Black Exoerience, by Claude Brown. An orange circle above the title contains the statement, Over 2 million copies in print

J Booksy@jbooksy· Jun 13

About the two girls, now adults, in the famous photo of the 1957 day Little Rock schools were supposed to integrate their schools but failed bc racism. It's mostly Elizabeth Eckford's story. Hazel, the white girl, later apologized & they were friends, but Hazel kind of didn't get it. #booksky

Cover of Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock, by David Margolick, with 3 photos. Lower photo in black and white shows Elizabeth wearing dark glasses, a white dress, and carrying her school books while surrounded by a crowd of angry white people. Behind her, one white girl in particular is Hazel, whose mouth is open in the midst of shouting something ugly, probably the n word. Above this photo are two color close-up portraits of adult Elizabeth, left, and adult Hazel, right. Both have clearly aged, with some wrinkles or gray hair. Elizabeth's expression looks sad and tired. Hazel's expression as she squints into the sun looks wary. The line between the color photos looks as though they have been torn apart.

J Booksy@jbooksy· Jun 7

So many Unspokens made this a tough read. Man engaged to be married falls in love w a not-yet divorced woman. Society declares she must be out & he must be in, so they pull accordingly. Message resonates: people can help each other, but they choose to let people twist, esp women. #booksky

Cover of The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton with a very busy and gaudy illustration of a woman and a man in an open carriage, its driver seated at left, with a large tree and a house in the background.

J Booksy@jbooksy· Jun 5

I loved this. Devoured it in a day & a half. Read it two more times after that.

Cover of The Wedding People by Alison Espach, with an illustration of two hands reaching up from choppy waves, one hand making the peace sign, and the other holding a bottle of champagne.

J Booksy@jbooksy· Jun 3

5/ The last part of the book contains more discursive essays, with quite a few illustrations, like this one of a flyer asking people to help find a lost Roomba, in an essay about Roombas.

Photo that has been converted to an illustration of a paper flyer with contact info tags, some of which have been torn off. A photo of a Roomba is in the center with a sad face drawn on it. Text handwritten above and below the sad Roomba reads "Lost Roomba. $ How much $ for info? As of Monday, January 20th, at 11 AM, our Roomba 650 vacuum (AKA Ernie) went missing [this is crossed out] was kidnapped. Please contact if found. His family misses him dearly."

J Booksy@jbooksy· Jun 3

4/ Facing recto describes the item and what makes it a hybrid. Here, text describes how mushrooms contaminated with Cesium 137 in Chernobyl are using melanin to convert radiation to fuel their growth. Scientists are working on using the fungi to create a cream to protect people from radiation.

Dense text describes how mushrooms in Chernobyl have absorbed nuclear radiation and are using its gamma energy to perform radiosynthesis with their melanin to fuel their growth. 3 different species were found to be doing this, in environments with radiation 500 times that of normal levels. NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab have realized that radiosynthesis could be used w the mushrooms to create a cream to protect people from radiation, such as in cancer patients being treated with chemo. Another mushroom species is also growing in the area where the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

J Booksy@jbooksy· Jun 3

3/ Entries begin w an illustration, taxonomy, and name on the verso. Shown here is the Radioactive Mushroom, from the Miscellaneous/Fungi section.

Specimen number 51. Radioactive Mushrooms. Kingdom: Miscellaneous. Category: Fungi. Illustration in grainy silver is of a Geiger counter, left, and a mushroom, right. The mushroom is labeled Radioactive Boletus.

J Booksy@jbooksy· Jun 3

2/ Some of the entries seem mundane at first, but wait there's more. Such as in this entry on Chicken Bones, which points out that chickens' body mass has multiplied 5x in this century. Their combined mass is greater than all other birds. Chicken bones will dominate the future fossil record.

This is a lot of text to take in. The major portion reads, "Compared to their ancestors in Roman times, chickens currently sold in supermarkets have a different skeleton, bone chemistry and genetics caused by human-directed changes in breeding, diet and farming practices. Their size has doubled since the Middle Ages, their body mass has multiplied fivefold over the course of the 20th century, and their growth rate and population dramatically increased after WWII. So much so that their combined mass exceeds that of all other birds on Earth."

J Booksy@jbooksy· Jun 3

Dang, this is a cool book. A Bestiary of the Anthropocene. "An illustrated compilation of hybrids of our time." I've been opening pages at random & finding cool stuff each time. Silver print in black paper throughout. #booksky /1

Cover of A Bestiary of the Anthropocene: On Hybrid Minerals, Animals, Plants & Fungi, with an illustration of an eagle in flying attack mode, whose talons are lashed to a four-pointed object, described on pages 84-85 as the Drone-Catching Eagle.

J Booksy@jbooksy· May 29

This was delightful. I learned a ton about octopuses--yes, that is the correct plural--within stories about her wanting to know more, to touch them, to learn their personalities, and getting to know the regulars at her local aquarium, besides. With color photos! #booksky

Cover of The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness, by Sy Montgomery, featuring an illustration of a purplish octopus extending its eight tentacles in tendril-fashion in all directions. A seal indicates that this book was a National Book Award Finalist.

J Booksy@jbooksy· May 23

Bluesky has a good sense of humor

Screen shot shows the post above in which a MAGA follower tells an Artemis astronaut to stop pretending he went to space, followed by a separate post with a photo of an astronaut in space, looking down at Earth.

J Booksy@jbooksy· May 8

Nonfiction, about the growth & change in opioids, fentanyl, & meth up to 2020, w personal stories mixed in. The drugs are now synthetic, cheap, super available, & much more deadly. This country is full of addictive sugar, food, & social media, so all are at risk. We need community instead. #booksky

Cover of The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth, by Sam Quinones, with a photo of a cloudy sky above a small town street lined with run-down stores and telephone poles. The clouds have been torn open and the subtitle is in the torn-open space.

J Booksy@jbooksy· May 2

I don't read much SF. But I picked this up bc it's by an author I chose to follow mostly at random when I came to this place. Easy to slip into at the outset. By page 75, I went, "Whoa." Then it morphed some more, became like a reverse Star Trek. The Consu: brilliant. I tip my hat. #booksky

Cover of The Old Man's War by John Scalzi, with an illustration of an orange circle, like a planet or a sun, with arrow-shaped shadows like weapons falling across it, all on a background in shades of blue.

J Booksy@jbooksy· Apr 26

Lionel Barrymore makes me cry, every time, twice. Plus, there's also a dachshund.

Movie poster for Grand Hotel, starring Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, and Lionel Barrymore.

J Booksy@jbooksy· Apr 24

This novel tells many stories: - Janavi & Sagar's marriage -backstories of each in India -murder mystery -interludes of the US West -J & S's experiences of US racism. Interludes slowed it. J & S seemed a little slow to realize some things. Got interesting 1/2 way in. Ending raised new ?s #booksky

Cover of Indian Country by Shobha Rao, with a graphic illustration of a light blue river meandering through orange hills. The cover made me buy the book.

J Booksy@jbooksy· Apr 11

This reminded me of hope, in a very hopeless-feeling time. From Dream Dictionary by Tony Crisp, the entry called Dream as spiritual guide. #booksky

Humans have always been faced by the impossible. To a baby, walking and not wetting its pants is impossible, but with many a fall and accident it does the impossible. It is a god in its achievement. To talk, to fly heavier-than-air planes, to walk on the Moon, were all impossible. Humans challenge the impossible every day. Over and over they fall, back into defeat. Many lie there broken. Yet with the next moment along come youngsters with no more sense than grasshoppers, and because they don't know what the difference is between right and left, do the impossible. Out of the infinite potential, the great unknown, they draw something new. With hope, with folly, with a wisdom they gain from who knows where, they demand more. And it's a common everyday sort of miracle. Mothers do it constantly for their children, transcending themselves. Lovers go through hell and heaven for each other and flower beyond who they were. You and I grow old on it as our daily bread,yet fail to see how holy it is. And if we turn away from it, it is because it offers no certainties, gives no authority, claims no reward. It is the spiritual life of people on the street. And our dreams remember, even if we fail. For this is the body and blood of the human spirit.

J Booksy@jbooksy· Apr 11

Best dream dictionary I've ever encountered. You may scoff, but the number of times I've looked up things I just dreamt about and said Yeah, that's it, is nearly 100%. Jungian. Some entries are more discursive, and those are interesting too. #booksky

Cover of Dream Dictionary: An A to Z Guide to Understanding Your Unconscious Mind, by Tony Crisp. With an illustration of a sleeping person's head on a pillow from which a thought cloud is bubbling, containing drawings of an ice cream sundae, a bicycle, a crown, an alarm clock, a cherub with bow and arrow, a woman diving, and a dollar sign.

J Booksy@jbooksy· Apr 5

7 short stories by Singaporean author Claire Tham. They establish a situation, get you comfortable with it, hang out there for a while, and then bang the last sentence blows the whole thing open or turns it upside down. Small trim, embossed cover.

Cover of Saving the Rainforest and Other Stories by Claire Tham, with a single-line drawing of a face with eyes closed. Two ovals are the pink of her cheeks, a blue flower is above her left eye, an oak leaf shape is over her right eye, and a gray fence shape is at the lower right.

J Booksy@jbooksy· Apr 4

Not sure what I just read. Psych suspense? In-su Park is a ranger at a suspicious forest. His job is to keep people out. Lawyer Ha-in Lee comes to investigate the disappearance of his brother, previous forest ranger. Then Ha-in gets killed. Then In-su starts drinking. What's alcohol & what's real?

Cover of The Owl Cries by Hye-Young Pyun, with an illustration, in red, of the outlines of an owl against a vivid blue background.

J Booksy@jbooksy· Mar 22

J Booksy@jbooksy· Mar 22

Early Wodehouse stories, "drafts." The ones w/out Jeeves were not as good, the ones with Jeeves were stronger but quickly became predictable. Don't think too much about the socioeconomics or you'll slip into a low boil. Entertaining surface fluff.