Tournament of Books 2022

Tournament of Books
Rooster Award for best fiction
sponsored by Field Notes and Bookshop
details | daily
annual self challenge
winner announced on March 31
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WINNER: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
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THE SHORTLIST:

All's Well
by Mona Awad
Literary, Horror | Published: 2021 | Goodreads | my rating: 5
interesting dark Shakespeare themed vibe

Beautiful World, Where Are You
by Sally Rooney
Literary, Ireland | Published: 2021 | Goodreads | my rating: 4
making sense of love, romance, relationships

The Book of Form and Emptiness
by Ruth Ozeki
Literary, Magical Realism | Published: 2021 | Goodreads

The Echo Wife
by Sarah Gailey
SciFi, Thriller | Published: 2021 | Goodreads | my rating: 4
to be human

In Concrete
by Anne Garréta
translated by Emma Ramadan
Literary | Published: 2021 | Goodreads | my rating: 5
loved the word play

Intimacies
by Katie Kitamura
Literary, Mystery | Published: 2021 | Goodreads | my rating: 4

Klara and the Sun
by Kazuo Ishiguro
Literary, Dystopian | Published: 2021 | Goodreads | my rating: 5
ugly observations of being human

Libertie
by Kaitlyn Greenidge
Historical, African American | Published: 2021 | Goodreads | my rating: 4

Matrix
by Lauren Groff
Literary, Historical | Published: 2021 | Goodreads | my rating: 4
women in power

Nervous System: A Novel
by Lina Meruane
translated by Megan McDowell
Literary, Medical | Published: 2021 | Goodreads | my rating: 5
science, math and illness

No One Is Talking about This
by Patricia Lockwood
Literary, Fantasy | Published: 2021 | Goodreads

Several People Are Typing
by Calvin Kasulke
Humor, SciFi | Published: 2021 | Goodreads

Subdivision
by J. Robert Lennon
Mystery, Surreal | Published: 2021 | Goodreads

The Trees
by Percival Everett
Literary, Mystery | Published: 2021 | Goodreads

When We Cease to Understand the World
by Benjamín Labatut
translated by Adrian Nathan West
Short Stories, Historical | Published: 2021 | Goodreads | my rating: 4
Play-in round books:

The Confession of Copeland Cane
by Keenan Norris
SciFi | Published: 2021 | Goodreads | my rating: 4
struggles of being a future young black boy and continued issues

Our Country Friends
by Gary Shteyngart
Literary | Published: 2021 | Goodreads

The Sentence
by Louise Erdrich
Magical Realism | Published: 2021 | Goodreads

Lovely Books and Things - 1.2.22

Lovely Books and Things
My Weekly Books and Films Update

Linking up with:
Sunday Post (details)
Mailbox Monday (details)

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HAPPY THINGS:

1. A cozy meal - Jamie Oliver's Sausage and Sage Sprouts (here)
2. Starting a cross stitch project, but first getting inspired by Flosstubers on YouTube
3. Downton Abbey: The Legacy Continues movie release poster - it's coming... March 18

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Library: audiobook

All's Well
by Mona Awad
Literary, Horror | Published: 2021 | Goodreads
Freebies: from Free Little Library

The Mayor of Casterbridge
by Thomas Hardy
Classics, Victorian | Published: 1962 (first 1886) | Goodreads

Nevermoor
The Trials of Morrigan Crow
by Jessica Townsend
illustrated by Jim Madsen
Fantasy, Middle Grade | Published: 2017 | Goodreads
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Virtual Author event: hosted by Murder By The Book
See archive of this (here)

Arya Winters and the Tiramisu of Death
by Amita Murray
Mystery, Cozy | Published: 2021 | Goodreads

Down a Dark River
by Karen Odden
Mystery, Victorian, London | Published: 2021 | Goodreads

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AND watched: theatre

Drive My Car (2021)
Original title: Doraibu mai kâ Director/Writer: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
Writer: Takamasa Oe
Based on short story: Haruki Murakami
Stars: Hidetoshi Nishijima, Tôko Miura, Reika Kirishima
Drama, Japan | imdb | my rating: 5
Adapted from a short story in Murakami Haruki's "Men Without Women". A director's wife was a playwright, but she died two years ago. When he's invited to direct a play at a festival in Hiroshima, the director finds his chauffeur to be a stoic woman. The two share many rides, and as communication is initiated secrets and confessions are gradually exchanged.

Upside down Christmas tree
at the Westfield San Francisco Centre
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* comment and TELL me what you have acquired for your shelves recently

Thanks for stopping by :-)

Lovely Books and Things - 8.8.21

Lovely Books and Things
My Weekly Books and Films Update

Linking up with:
Sunday Post (details)
Mailbox Monday (details)

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HAPPY THINGS:

1. Morrocan restaurant with belly dancing show
2. Preparing TBR pile for my Summer theme event (here)
3. Team Lab: Continuity at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco - this immersive art exhibit introduces the concept of ultrasubjective spaces.

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Library:

The Last Resort
by Marissa Stapley
Mystery, Thriller | Published: 2019 | Goodreads

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Virtual Author event: hosted SFPL
See archive of this (here)

The Passenger
How a Travel Writer Learned to Love Cruises & Other Lies from a Sinking Ship
by Chaney Kwak
Memoir, Travel, Survival | Published: 2021 | Goodreads

Virtual Author event: hosted by Novel Suspects
See archive of this (here)

Let's Talk Murder Books: Women in Crime Fiction Panel

The Therapist
by B.A. Paris
Thriller | Published: 2021 | Goodreads

Local Missing Woman
by Mary Kubica
Thriller, Mystery | Published: 2021 | Goodreads

Hollywood Hack
by Kellye Garrett
Mystery | Published: 2019 | Goodreads

A Game of Cones
by Abby Collette
Mystery, Cozy | Published: 2021 | Goodreads
Virtual Author event: hosted by Third Place Books
Check out their calendar for future free author events (here)

All's Well
by Mona Awad
Literary, Horror | Published: 2021 | Goodreads -giveaway offer thru 8/16/21
Virtual Author event: hosted by Green Apple Books
Check out their calendar for future free author events (here)

Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost
by David Hoon Kim
Literary, Paris | Published: 2021 | Goodreads
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* comment and TELL me what you have acquired for your shelves recently

Thanks for stopping by :-)

Bunny by Mona Awad

Bunny
by Mona Awad
Published: 2019
Publisher: Viking
Genre: Horror
Hardback: 307
Rating: 5
Goodreads
Website

First sentence(s):
We call them Bunnies because that is what they call each other. Seriously. Bunny.

Zombie sighting:
Where she drinks her spiked gunpowder tea and draws th eworld as a series of zombies.
-chapter 6, page 51

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and seem to move and speak as one.

But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.

The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination.

My two-bits:
Loved how there are references and hints of fairy tales, Alice in Wonderland and Watership Down.

Appreciation for writers and their imaginations.

Plenty of creepy and snickering moments.

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* monthly theme: True Crime, Hunger, Horror, Harassment