Litsy: Where books make friends

A few months ago, the ever-lovely Jim of YA Yeah Yeah tweeted about a cool new app called Litsy that he’d found. He said it was a cross between Goodreads and Instagram and my love for both of those social media sites meant I downloaded it immediately! I’ve been using it ever since.

So when I got an email from the lovely people at Litsy introducing me to the app and asking if I fancied sharing my thoughts on it, I obviously said yes! Here are some awesome things about Litsy:

• You can review a book, add it to a ‘stack’ (read and to-read), add a picture, add an update and a quote – it really is a mishmash of Instagram and Goodreads!

• You get Litfluence points for everything you add and every time someone interacts with your updates!

• It’s ridiculously easy to use. It only took me minutes to figure it out, add a profile and upload a pic and mini-review of my first book!

• It’s still a new app so it’s easy to get your pictures and reviews seen and interacted with! 

• The reviews have a 300 character limit. I love the brevity of it and the pressure to make sure you only include your strongest feelings about a title.

• Litsy has already got big book communities like Epic Reads, Strand Bookstore in NYC, Book Riot and US publishers on their feed. I really hope it’ll spread to the UK soon!

• I also think their logo is really cute…

There’s only one thing left to say: follow me on Litsy! I’m SophieWaters. You can download it from the App Store!

Disclaimer: This wasn’t sponsored and I’m receiving nothing in exchange for this review. Just sharing a cool bookish app!

Sophie 

The Unexpected Everything, Morgan Matson

Pages: 519

Publisher: S&S

Release Date: 5^th May 2016

Edition: UK proof, review copy

Other Titles from this Author: Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour, Second Chance Summer, Since You’ve Been Gone

Before the scandal, Andie had important plans. And zero of them involved walking an insane amount of dogs, being in the same house as her dad or hanging out with Clark. Now there’s a whole summer stretching out ahead of Andie without a plan. And Andie always sticks to the plan.

But here’s the thing – if everything’s always mapped out, you can never find the unexpected. And where’s the fun in that?

I’m a big fan of Morgan Matson’s so I always get excited for a new books from her. Enjoying The Unexpected Everything definitely wasn’t unexpected!

Morgan Matson has a way with writing friendships. As much as The Unexpected Everything is about Andie falling for Clark and Andie and her dad rediscovering their relationship, there is a lot of focus on friendship. The dynamic between Andie, Toby, Bri, Palmer and Tom is amazing. The in-jokes, the bets, the challenges, the traditions and the surety of them all being there – it’s the kind of friendship you can only hope you’ll get one day. But I also loved that it wasn’t impervious to fracturing and changing as they all grew and changed. It just felt so real and tangible and I 100% want to be a part of their group.

During the summer of The Unexpected Everything, Andie changed just as much as her friendship group did. As the daughter of a congressman her everything is strictly controlled and she always errs on the side of caution. I loved seeing her let it all go and crawl her back to opening herself up to new experiences and to the adorable Clark. They were just so cute together! SPOILER! Having Clark be a famous fantasy novelist who published young and now has writer’s block was so brilliant and it made me laugh out loud. It was a really cool thread to have running through the story and I loved how the excerpts from Clark’s books related to the main story. Very clever and a lot of fun! SPOILER OVER!

I actually think that the most interesting dynamic of the novel is Andie’s relationship with her dad, though. Since her mother’s death five years ago and her dad’s career as a congressman, they barely know each other. Watching them close the gaps, talk about Andie’s mum and share their lives with each other again was so lovely. Andie’s fear of losing him to his work again made my heart ache.

I loved The Unexpected Everything and it's made me so eager to go back and devour Since You’ve Been Gone!

Thanks to S&S for the review copy.

Sophie 

Authors I'm Reading Completely: Part One

As I've begun to delve into classic and adult fiction I’m coming across lots of authors that I'm falling head over heels for, only to realise that they’ve got an epic backlist. Being so firmly entrenched in the YA world, that doesn’t happen too often!

So, here are a few of the authors that I’m planning on reading the complete works of:

 I've only read Wyndham’s most famous novel, ‘The Day of the Triffids’, but it was enough to get me to buy two more before I'd even finished my first and add the rest to my TBR. He was one of the original apocalyptic novelists and his stories also have a dose of science thrown in there. They’re very readable and feel remarkably modern considering Wyndham wrote during the 50s and 60s.

Ah, the Brontes, my new obsession. I read ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Wuthering Heights’ last year for the #2015ClassicsChallenge, and while I enjoyed ‘Wuthering Heights’, I wasn’t the biggest fan of ‘Jane Eyre’. I was a bit underwhelmed. And then I’ve read ‘Agnes Grey’ and ‘The Tenant of Wildfell Hall’ over the past few months and fallen in love with Anne Bronte. Now I’m determined to finish off Charlotte’s remaining novels – ‘The Professor’, ‘Shirley’ and ‘Villette’ – so I can officially call Anne my favourite.

Late last year I devoured ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’ in only two sittings. It was a creepy, unsettling, psychological twist of a novel and I adored every page of it. Though Jackson’s novels are short, they pack a serious punch. I've also read her short story collection ‘The Lottery and Other Stories’ and I'm eager to carry on with her novels. There aren’t a huge number though, so I’ll be taking my sweet time!

All I'd read from Adichie was ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ until I picked up her short story collection ‘The Thing Around Your Neck’ with my Christmas book tokens. I was blown away by her skill with creating characters with deep emotional depths and histories in only 40 pages. I immediately knew I'd have to read her novels too and bought a boxset of all three!

Daphne du Maurier is another author that I fell in love with during the #2015ClassicsChallenge! (You really should sign up for the #2016ClassicsChallenge – who knows what you’ll fall in love with!). My first of hers was ‘Frenchman’s Creek’ and I was really apprehensive, but honestly? Pirates, an 18^th century woman rebelling against her society and position and a gorgeous romance. Winner. Now I've read ‘Rebecca’ which blew me away and ‘Jamaica Inn’ which I thoroughly enjoyed. Luckily, du Maurier was really prolific and I have a good 17 novels to go!

I almost feel like I've grown up with Elizabeth Gaskell even though I only read ‘Cranford’ last year. My mum was a huge fan of her novels and the adaptations were a staple in our house on lazy Sundays. I’m hugely excited to read ‘North and South’, ‘Mary Barton’ and ‘Wives and Daughters’, and I’m sure she has a few more that are harder to get your hands on too! She wrote between Austen and the Brontes and I love her gentle romances and explorations of the industrial north of England.

These six authors are only just scratching the surface so look out for part two of the authors I’m reading completely coming soon!

Sophie 

The Loneliness of Distant Beings, Kate Ling

Pages: 358

Publisher: Little, Brown

Release Date: 19^th May 2016

Edition: UK e-proof, NetGalley review copy

It is that quick, that strong, that beautiful. And it is also totally impossible.

Even though she knows it’s impossible, Seren longs to have the sunshine on her skin. It’s something she feels she needs to stay sane. But when you’re hurtling through space at thousands of kilometres an hour, sometimes you have to accept there are things you cannot change.

Except that the arrival of Dom in her life changes everything in ways she can barely comprehend. He becomes the sun for her, and she can't help but stay in his orbit. To lose him would be like losing herself.

In the dark, can a heart still hope?

I’ve been dying to read Kate Ling’s debut ever since I heard about it, and while I enjoyed it, The Loneliness of Distant Beings didn’t quite live up to my expectations.

Reading The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet last year rebooted my eagerness to get into sci-fi and it's set my expectations for all the whole genre through the roof. And The Loneliness of Distant Beings didn’t meet them. I was hoping for a romantic, clever and fun space opera, and while it was all of those, it was also melodramatic and I found myself rolling my eyes constantly. This book features some of the worst instalove I've read in a very, very long time.

Seren and Dom were making sweeping declarations and risky decisions in the name of love only days after meeting. It's all very dramatic and I just couldn’t buy into it – therenwas no grounding for their feelings other than physical attraction and they blatantly ignored the harsh repercussions of their relationship.

Seren lives aboard Ventura. She’s never seen land and she never will because she’s part of a 700-year round trip mission to trace the origin of a mysterious signal found on Earth. And they’ve only been travelling for 84 years. To ensure the ship makes it to Epsilon, everything is rigidly controlled: education, duties and work roles, marriage and breeding. Seren is chaffing against the restraints and Dom is the final straw.

I really liked the set up of Seren’s world. I loved how bleak and inevitable everything seemed, even as she and Dom fought against the people in charge. Is it weird to say that I was actually hoping for the ending that felt inevitable – the failure to overcome such a powerful system? It would have been bleak af, but it would have been realistic and instead we got a happy ever after, albeit a tricky one to attain. It was like the tone of the middle section set one thing up, then someone thought ‘Nope, this needs a HEA!’ and everything sharply changed direction. It just felt a little disjointed. I do have to admit that the very end was super intriguing and I'd definitely be interested in seeing what happens to these characters next. There’s such a lot of possibility in the position we left Seren.

The Loneliness of Distant Beings is a fun and easy read, but I was disappointed by the intense instalove and disjointed tone.

Thanks to Little Brown for the review copy.

Sophie 

#2016ClassicsChallenge: Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw

Originally published in 1878 by Harper & Brothers (Daisy Miller) and 1898 by William Heinemann (The Turn of Screw)

My edition: The 2012 Penguin English Library paperback.

WHEN I Discovered This Classic

I don’t remember not knowing about this classic, but it was only recently (in the last few months) that I realised it was two novellas rather than one novel…

WHY I Chose to Read It

The Turn of the Screw was the Audible Daily Deal a few weeks ago and so I snapped it up. It’s a very short audiobook and there’s nothing like a short audiobook to get me to finally read something I've been meaning to for ages! So I decided to just go for it, and I might as well read Daisy Miller while I’m at it – it’s even shorter!

WHAT Makes It a Classic

I’m honestly not sure.

WHAT I Thought of This Classic

Daisy Miller

Daisy Miller is a short story, coming in at only around 65 pages, and I devoured it in about an hour. It tells the story of an American man, Winterbourne, who meets New Yorker Daisy in Italy as she travels around Europe with her mother and younger brother.

It soon becomes clear that Daisy’s flirting with Winterbourne was a sport rather than the serious nature which that kind of affection would be taken for in the 1850s. She's precocious and flighty, breaking the rules of society and polite conduct with ease and no one to stop her. Henry James brings in some really interesting discussions about how societal rules and conventions differ between Europe and America, and I think he was more on the side of Europe.

This clear intention became really obvious with the ending of the story. I'm about to discuss spoilers so if you want to steer clear, skip to the next paragraph! Okay. The story took a didactic turn with Daisy’s behaviour becoming more and more unacceptable by the members of English and European society that they were among in Rome. When ignoring common knowledge to not walk around the city after dusk, she visited the Colosseum and subsequently contracted malaria and died from it. It didn’t quite sit well with me, but I could also see how it would have made Daisy Miller a significant story young women would have been made to read in the tight-laced Victorian era.

I'd heard a lot about how difficult James is to read: his sentences are long and overwrought and his points rambling and hard to grasp, but I actually found it easy to follow and become absorbed by Daisy Miller. I actually much preferred the directness of the narration to how it was done in The Turn of the Screw.

The Turn of the Screw

The narrative set-up is convoluted in a way I'm coming to expect from mid-19^th century novels. A nameless narrator is listening to his friend, Douglas, read an account of a former governess of her experiences at Bly, looking after a boy and a girl who are in the custody of an uninterested uncle. I find this style a bit tiresome and unnecessary, but I reckon it was probably an early version of split or dual narration?

I was glad when we got into the governess’s story. I actually listened to the audiobook read by Emma Thompson and I think that was the only reason I continued reading it. She really is quite an actor. I basically want every audiobook I listen to for the rest of time to be narrated by her – that’s possible right? I loved how everything became more and more taught and intense as the story went, but I wasn’t hugely interested.

The ghosts haunting Bly never felt particularly sinister and I wasn’t creeped out at all. I was just a little underwhelmed, really.

WILL It Stay a Classic

Probably, though I don’t think it’ll stick with me. The Turn of the Screw is thought by many people as the first ghost story!

WHO I’d Recommend it To

- People intimidated by full-length classic novels.

- Fans of Gothic short stories and explorations of the differences between the Europe and US during the Victorian era.

Sophie