lizard-reads-the-world

[lizard-reads-the-world]

Fools, I haven't spoken to my cousin Temminckii in 5 million years!

Suwannee Alligator Snapping Turtle (Macrochelys suwanniensis)

Suwannee River in Georgia and Florida, USA

Status: Threatened

-------

I'll try to highlight some of the species that gained protection in the US under the ESA this year. This dinosaur of a turtle was one of them (they can get huge!) They were thought to be Macrochelys temminckii, the regular old alligator snapping turtle, but turns out they diverged about 5-13 million years ago and are their own species.

[lizard-reads-the-world]

Käsespätzle (German for "spätzle with cheese", also called käsknöpfle in Vorarlberg and Liechtenstein) is a traditional dish of the German regions of Swabia and Allgäu, Vorarlberg, as well as Liechtenstein and Switzerland. Hot spätzle and grated cheese, such as cheddar cheese, Emmentaler or granular cheese, are layered alternately and are finally decorated with fried onions. After adding each layer the käsespätzle is put into the oven until warmed and the cheese is melted. Accompanying side dishes are green salads or potato salad. In Vorarlberg and also in Liechtenstein käsespätzle is usually served with apple sauce. Residuals of käsespätzle is fried with butter in a pan. src.: Wikipedia

[lizard-reads-the-world]

The Silver Bone

4.75/5⭐️

Written by Ukrainian author Andrey Kurkov, the first book in The Kyiv Mysteries series marks his return to fiction after over a year of writing about the ongoing war back in his home country. Before I go on to talk about the story itself I just want to say something, I LOVE MAPS ON BOOKS, they're my guilty pleasure and JUST LOOK AT IT!

ALSO SPOILERS AHEAD SO PROCEED WITH CAUTION!!

Ok, so starting with how gut wrenching Samson's father's death is, and we don't really get to know much about him, just that he saved his son from death but ended up dying himself.

The way Kurkov writes about early soviet Kyiv and the struggles of a mid-war life as well as the life of the main character helps us understand and empathise with Samson but not feel pity for him. As I read and reached the 100 page mark, I found myself feeling both proud and excited for what he would accomplish; I felt for him at the beginning with such a change in his life but as the pages went on, he grew up in the sense that he tried his best to rise up to the situation and also, speaking about how he is written now, not fall into weird clichés some main characters from mystery novels sometimes fall into like being know it alls and extremely lucky when going through the respective mystery. The ending marks the great beginning of a series and the case was wrapped up just fine. I overall enjoyed this book and look forward to the next book in the series.

[lizard-reads-the-world]

🍉 Books for Read Palestine Week 2024 [ Nov 29 - Dec 5 ]

✨ This guide will no doubt get hidden, given the topic, so please help me by sharing this!

❓What are you reading this week?

🍉 Educate and empathize! Here are 82 books you can read for Read Palestine Week! I've included 26 queer books for those of you who #readqueerallyear as well. Please read these books to learn more about the Palestinian experience. Shukran (thank you)!

✨ Poetry 🍉 Enemy of the Sun - (ed) Edmund Ghareeb and Naseer Aruri 🍉 A Mountainous Journey - Fadwa Tuqan 🍉 So What - Taha Muhammad Ali 🍉 Affiliation - Mira Mattar 🍉 The Butterfly's Burden - Mahmoud Darwish 🍉 Born Palestinian, Born Black & The Gaza Suite - Suheir Hammad 🍉 Breaking Poems - Suheir Hammad 🍉 In the Presence of Absence - Mahmoud Darwish 🍉 Rifqa - Mohammed el-Kurd 🍉 My Voice Sought the Wind - Susan Abulhawa 🍉 Blood Orange - Yaffa 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 To All the Yellow Flowers - Raya Tuffaha 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Before the Next Bomb Drops - Remi Kanazi 🍉 Birthright - George Abraham 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Tent Generations - Various 🍉 Who is Owed Springtime - Rasha Abdulhadi 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 The Twenty-Ninth Year - Hala Alyan 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Some Things Never Leave You - Zeina Azzam 🍉 I Saw Ramallah - Mourid Barghouti 🍉 Nothing More To Lose - Najwan Darwish 🍉 The Specimen's Apology - George Abraham & Leila Abdelrazaq 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Shell Houses - Rasha Abdulhadi 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 The Moon That Turns You Back - Hala Alyan 🍉 Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear - Mosab Abu Toha 🍉 Halal If You Hear Me - (ed) Fatimah Asghar & Safia Elhillo 🍉 Water & Salt -Lena Khalaf Tuffaha 🍉 Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow. - Noor Hindi 🏳️‍🌈

✨ Non-Fiction/Memoirs 🍉 Are You This? Or Are You This? - Madian Al Jazerah 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 This Arab is Queer - (ed) Elias Jahshan 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Love is an Ex-Country - Randa Jarrar 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Decolonial Queering in Palestine - Walaa Alqaisiya 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Namesake: Reflections on A Warrior Woman - N.S. Nuseibeh 🍉 The Trinity of Fundamentals - Wisam Rafeedie 🍉 Between Banat - Mejdulene Bernard Shomali 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique - Sa'ed Atshan 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom - Ahed Tamimi & Dena Takruri 🍉 Fashioning the Modern Middle East: Gender, Body, and Nation - Reina Lewis and Yasmine Nachabe Taan 🍉 Balcony on the Moon: Coming of Age in Palestine - Ibtisam Barakat 🍉 We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders: A Memoir of Love and Resistance - Linda Sarsour 🍉 Palestine: A Socialist Introduction - Sumaya Awad & Brian Bean 🍉 Voices of the Nakba - Diana Allan 🍉 Tracing Homelands - Linda Dittmar 🍉 Black Power & Palestine - Michael R. Fischbach 🍉 The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappé 🍉 A Day in the Life of Abed Salama - Nathan Thrall 🍉 A Land with a People - Esther Farmer, Rosalind Petchesky, & Sarah Sills 🍉 Inara by Mx. Yaffa AS 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Mural - Mahmoud Darwish 🍉 Light in Gaza - Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing, & Michael Merryman lotze 🍉 The Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein 🍉 Gaza - Norman Finkelstein

✨ Fiction 🍉 A Map of Home - Randa Jarrar 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 You Exist Too Much - Zaina Arafat 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 The Skin and Its Girl - Sarah Cypher 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Minor Detail - Adania Shibli 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 The Philistine - Leila Marshy 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Muneera and the Moon - Sonia Sulaiman 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Belladonna - Anbara Salam 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Behind You Is The Sea - Susan Muaddi Darraj 🍉 The Coin - Yasmin Zaher 🍉 Guapa - Saleem Haddad 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 The Parisian - Isabella Hammad 🍉 Salt Houses - Hala Alyan 🍉 The Ordeal of Being Known - Malia Rose 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 From Whole Cloth - Sonia Sulaiman 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Against the Loveless World - Susan Abulhawa 🍉 The Beauty of Your Face - Sahar Mustafah 🍉 Mornings in Jenin - Susan Abulhawa 🍉 My First and Only Love - Sahar Khalifeh 🍉 They Fell Like Stars From the Sky & Other Stories - Sheikha Helawy 🍉 Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad 🍉 Wild Thorns - Sahar Khalifeh 🍉 A Woman is No Man - Etaf Rum 🍉 Mother of Strangers - Suad Amiry 🍉 Hazardous Spirits - Anbara Salam 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 The Book of Ramallah - Maya Abu Al-Hayat

🏳️‍🌈 Graphic Novels 🍉 Mis(h)adra - Iasmin Omar Ata 🍉 Confetti Realms - Nadia Shammas 🍉 Where Black Stars Rise - Nadia Shammas & Marie Enger 🍉 Nayra and the Djinn - Iasmin Omar Ata 🍉 Squire - Nadia Shammas & Sara Alfageeh 🍉 My Mama's Magic - Amina Awad

[lizard-reads-the-world]

I think I'm going to be changing my username soon to something less theme-specific. It will probably have 'tokage' or 'lizard' to match my storygraph account.

[lizard-reads-the-world]

Love the asexual jaguar in the right corner. He's like, damn, there's nothing I love more in the world than a cool, refreshing drink.

[Image ID: Realistic painting. Aphrodite floats through the forest in a sexy red dress. A group of wolves and big cats surround her like she's the hottest thing on Earth. Meanwhile, a single jaguar drinks from the river, ignoring everyone else.]

Aphrodite by Briton Rivière (1902)

[lizard-reads-the-world]

10% off Black Friday 📚

Need a bookish gift for your favorite reader-person? I create unique book merch with carefully-restored classic art! There's much more than pictured here, and I can add your favorite if you ask, too!

The shop is on sale for Friday! -> LiteratureAF.etsy.com

[lizard-reads-the-world]

Hey, since it’s That One Shopping Day, I have 10% off in my bookish Etsy shop in case anyone wants to check it out. 🙃

10% off Black Friday 📚

Need a bookish gift for your favorite reader-person? I create unique book merch with carefully-restored classic art! There's much more than pictured here, and I can add your favorite if you ask, too!

The shop is on sale for Friday! -> LiteratureAF.etsy.com

[lizard-reads-the-world]

I purchased The Old Man Who Read Love Stories by Luis Sepúlveda, translated by Peter Bush, in a small bookshop in Buenos Aires in Fall 2022. Sepúlveda, an Chilean author who lived in exile in Spain for much of his life, had been one of the first causalities of Covid-19. My body and heart were still smarting from everything we had endured and were still enduring, the grief, the rising denial. But it had been recommended to me as a fundamentally uplifting story, romantic, powerful.

It didn't disappoint. Antonio José Bolivar Proaño is an old man now, dispensing wisdom with his keen, hard-taught knowledge of the Ecuadoran jungle he lives in. He grates against the local settlers, men who refuse to respect the landscape around them. Nearby kills by an ocelot force him and the rest of the town into action, hunting down the animal that seems to have caught the taste of blood. The book is so short, yet epic. It captures the Shuar indigenous people through Antonio, who is adopted into their community for a long period of his life. It captures the battle between man and nature, a battle that doesn't need to exist, that doesn't need to be settled with the brutal, final violence that the settlers use. Antonio is an enchanting character for the ages, and he carries the book with a sense of resounding sadness but also a feeling of determined hope.

Content warnings for anti-Indigenous sentiment and language, racism.

[lizard-reads-the-world]

Travel Destination: Pakistan

Written in the Stars by Aisha Saeed

Naila's conservative immigrant parents have always said the same thing: She may choose what to study, how to wear her hair, and what to be when she grows up-but they will choose her husband but when Naila falls in love with a boy Saif, her parents are livid and plan a vacation back to their homeland so Naila can reconnect with her roots.

However plans change and this vacation quickly turns to a nightmare when her parents find her a husband, Naila is running out of time, has Naila's fate been written in the stars? Or can she still make her own destiny?

Nura and the Immortal Palace by M.T. Khan

Nura must spend her time Mica mining for extra cash to support her family, however there’s rumours of treasure that could not only change her life but her family’s.

Her plan backfires when the mines collapse and four kids, including her best friend, Faisal, are claimed dead. Nura refuses to believe it and shovels her way through the dirt hoping to find him. Instead, she finds herself at the entrance to a strange world of purple skies and pink seas—a portal to the opulent realm of jinn, inhabited by the trickster creatures from her mother’s cautionary tales.

Under the Tamarind Tree by Nigar Alam

1964. Karachi, Pakistan. Rozeena is running out of time. She'll lose her home—her parents' safe haven since fleeing India and the terrors of Partition—if her medical career doesn't take off soon. But success may come with an unexpected price. Meanwhile the interwoven lives of her childhood best friends—Haaris, Aalya, and Zohair—seem to be unraveling with each passing day. The once small and inconsequential differences between their families' social standing now threaten to divide them. Then one fateful night someone ends up dead and the life they once took for granted shatters.

The Women’s Courtyard by Khadija Mastur

Set in the 1940s with Partition looming, Aliya dreams of educating herself and venturing beyond the courtyard walls, however she surrounded by the petty squabbles of her household.

Aliya must endure many trials before she achieves her goals, though at what personal cost?

An Abundance of Wild Roses by Feryal Ali-Gauhar

In a land woven with myth, chained with tradition and afflicted by war and the march of progress, the spirits of the mountains keep a baleful eye on the struggles of the villagers who scrape a living from the bodies of their wildlife. As the elements turn on the village, can humanity find a way to co-exist with nature that doesn't destroy either of them?

[lizard-reads-the-world]

AUTHOR FEATURE:

﹒Helen Oyeyemi﹒

Eight Books Written By this Author:

Boy, Snow, Bird

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

Gingerbread

White is for Witching

Mr. Fox

The Icarus Girl

Peaces

The Opposite House

___

Happy reading!

[lizard-reads-the-world]

Searching WorldCat by subject. This is insanely helpful, why haven't I done this before?

Filtered by language, fiction, ebook. I have to figure out where to access any one book, but finding a list is usually the biggest challenge.

[lizard-reads-the-world]

Outside of Latvia there's a few family histories and WW2 fiction on the country:

I'm finding 18 to be a little slow for me—there seems to be chapters of this WW1 soldier just. Walking. Going to sample some others, or try the Baltic Belles anthology.

Latvian books in English

High Tide by Inga Ābele The Book of Riga: A City in Short Fiction, anthology Come to Me by Kārlis Vērdiņš (poetry) Doom 94 by Jānis Joņevs Flesh-coloured Dominoes by Zigmunds Skujins Distant Fathers by Marina Jarre 30 Questions People Don't Ask by Inga Gaile (poetry) Soviet Milk by Nora Ikstena 18 by Pauls Bankovskis

I was having a hard time finding books for Latvia - here's what I came up with. Anyone have any to add?

I haven't decided yet but 18 has an interesting premise to me.

[lizard-reads-the-world]

Succotash is a culinary dish consisting primarily of sweet corn with lima beans or other shell beans. Other ingredients may be added including corned beef, potatoes, turnips, salt pork, tomatoes, multi-colored sweet peppers, and okra. Because of the relatively inexpensive and more readily available ingredients, the dish was popular during the Great Depression in the United States. It was sometimes cooked in a casserole form, often with a light pie crust on top as in a traditional pot pie. Succotash is a dish with a long history. The stew was introduced to the colonists in the 17th century by indigenous Americans. Composed of ingredients unknown in Europe at the time, it gradually became a standard meal in the cuisine of New England and is a traditional dish of many Thanksgiving celebrations in the region, as well as in Pennsylvania and other states. src.: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/succotash, Bowles, Ella Shannon (1947). Secrets of New England Cooking. Barrows, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/19/dining/yes-succotash-has-a-luxurious-side.html, https://newengland.com/yankee-magazine/food/succotash-recipe-with-a-history/, Morgan, Diane and John Rizzo. The Thanksgiving Table: Recipes and Ideas to Create Your Own Holiday Tradition. Pg. 122 photo ref.: https://foodmeanderings.com/corn-succotash-gluten-free/

[lizard-reads-the-world]

Latvian books in English

High Tide by Inga Ābele The Book of Riga: A City in Short Fiction, anthology Come to Me by Kārlis Vērdiņš (poetry) Doom 94 by Jānis Joņevs Flesh-coloured Dominoes by Zigmunds Skujins Distant Fathers by Marina Jarre 30 Questions People Don't Ask by Inga Gaile (poetry) Soviet Milk by Nora Ikstena 18 by Pauls Bankovskis

I was having a hard time finding books for Latvia - here's what I came up with. Anyone have any to add?

I haven't decided yet but 18 has an interesting premise to me.

[lizard-reads-the-world]

Eve Out of Her Ruins (🇲🇺 Mauritius)

[image 1: book cover, a white background with geometric shapes and abstract watery ink blotches; image 2: a map showing Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar; image 3: an aerial view of Port Louis, a crowded port city beside a teal ocean, with mountains in the distance, source: wikimedia]

Eve Out of Her Ruins

Author: Ananda Devi

World Challenge Read for 🇲🇺 Mauritius

Review

What words describe this sort of book? Raw, visceral. Those words seem cliché when the writing actually takes your breath away. This book is short, but a real punch, making you really feel the despair and hopelessness of growing up trapped in a poverty-wreaked district on an island.

As a young child, Eve has nothing. As she grows up, too soon she realizes she does have a currency, something everyone wants - her body. And she is determined to keep control of her agency while trading what she has to someday escape this hole of a town. (The fictional town literally translates as 'shithole')

The story follows the points of view of four teenagers: mostly Eve, but also Saadiq, an aspiring poet in love with Eve; Savita, the only one Eve truly loves; and Clélio, an angry boy caught up in circumstances.

The story could have easily gotten bogged down in paragraphs of poetic despair, but instead takes a turn toward a sort of revenge thriller, which kept me invested until the end.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★    5 stars

Genre: #literary #realistic #coming of age

Other reps: #straight #sapphic-ish (up to interpretation)

[lizard-reads-the-world]

The sky is clear. It's a good day for small ghosts.