An American expat couple in the 1950s traveling through North Africa with a little too much main character syndrome and being naive to the dangers and alien culture they find themselves amidst. Existential and depressing stuff, but still captivating- you wont forget it anytime soon. Anything by Paul Bowles is awesome.
4d ago
Related Recs
🇦
I found this book on the shelf of a small lake cabin my family used to stay in sometimes (smells like moth balls, canoe paddles as decor, bunk beds) and devoured it during our stay. This book is slow in the way that Green Card (1990) is slow. The tension builds to a romantic crescendo later in the book and you’re like oh my god!!! Nevil Shute was an Australian author better known for his nuclear apocalypse novel On the Beach that scared the shit out of me in middle school. I recommend A Town Like Alice to people as the best novel you’ve never heard of with the caveat that it was published in 1950 and has an unmistakably colonial perspective. Read it if you loved Atonement.
Feb 22, 2022
I read this novella all in one sitting on the train to Bath, and I haven't been able to stop thing about it. Set in the 1920s, the main character is shellshocked WWI veteran who ventures into the British countryside to restore a mural in an old church. But it feels like more than an anti war novel, its about the end of summer, the passage of time and modernity, finding your place in a changing world. A Month in the Country is a celebration of brokenness — not the suffering of brokenness but, rather, the vulnerability that brokenness brings.
“We can ask and ask but we can’t have again what once seemed ours for ever — the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. They’ve gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass.
All this happened so long ago. And I never returned, never wrote, never met anyone who might have given me news of Oxgodby. So, in memory, it stays as I left it, a sealed room furnished by the past, airless, still, ink long dry on a put-down pen.”
Mar 18, 2025
đź“š
An escapism read at it's finest during a time we need it most. Indulge in the effervescence of Shangri-La (not Rick's house). Doesn't hurt that every edition of the novel has different, but uniquely excellent cover artwork.
Jan 22, 2024
Top Recs from @b1dweezy
May 4, 2025
🔢
I don’t believe in ranking things- restaurants, albums, books, movies, athletes anything, top x lists whatever. I think it’s a waste of time honestly. Even with a completely objective criterion what’s the point. Would rather listen to and read people just talk about their favorite things and why they are special and meaningful to them- everyone has their own, interesting reasons. And this is a great place to do that!
Feb 26, 2025
🪑
Mar 2, 2025