#julie orringer

[imgonnagetkilledbynutstink]

Question to anyone who read The Flight Portfolio after watching Transatlantic, did you picture Varian as Cory in the book as well?

[shafershouse]

Books Read: 2019

January

The Silent Patient (Alex Michaelides)

February

Pillow Thoughts (Courtney Peppernell)

A Gentleman in Moscow (Amor Towles)

March

The Age of Light (Whitney Scharer)

The Winter Sister (Megan Collins)

April

Daisy Jones & The Six (Taylor Jenkins Reid)

The Kremlin Conspiracy (Joel C. Rosenberg)

The Municipalists (Seth Fried)

Nature (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Miracle Creek (Angie Kim)

May

The Light of the Fireflies (Paul Pen)

Beyond The Point (Claire Gibson)

June

Lost and Wanted (Nell Freudenberger)

July 

The Flight Portfolio (Julie Orringer)

The Golden Hour (Beatriz Williams)

A Nearly Normal Family (M. T. Edvardsson)

August

September

Summer of ‘69 (Elin Hilderbrand)

October

The Gifted School (Bruce Holsinger)

November

The Haunting of Hill House (Shirley Jackson)

The Whisper Man (Alex North)

December

The Turn of the Key (Ruth Ware)

[nedlittle]

apropos of nothing, here are some gay historical fiction novels that engage with historical queerness in thoughtful, complex, and interesting ways (organized chronologically)

hild by nicola griffith ↪ early 7th century england

a tip for the hangman by alison epstein ↪ 1585-1593 england

confessions of the fox by jordy rosenberg ↪ 1702-1724* england

the confessions of frannie langton by sara collins ↪ 1812-1826 jamaica to england

patience and sarah by isabel miller ↪ 1816 america

devotion by hannah kent ↪ 1830s prussia to australia

the sweetness of water by nathan harris ↪ 1865 america

whiskey when we're dry by john larison ↪ 1885 america

the city of palaces by michael nava ↪ 1897-1913 mexico

tipping the velvet by sarah waters ↪ 1890s england

at swim, two boys by jamie o'neill ↪ 1915-1916 ireland

the gods of tango by caro de robertis ↪ 1913-1920s argentina

uncommon charm by emily bergslien and kat weaver ↪ 1920s america

the book of salt by monique truong ↪ 1930s vietnam to paris

the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay by michael chabon ↪ 1939-1954 america and beyond

the flight portfolio by julie orringer ↪ 1940 france

the savage kind by john copenhaver ↪ 1940s america

a thin bright line by lucy jane bledsoe ↪ 1950s america

*this one has a framing device and footnotes from the present day but the bulk of the story is set in the early 1700s

[liefst]

books i read in 2023

Sayaka Murata, Convenience store woman

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-five

Maryam Hassouni, Wat de fak

Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo

Margaret Atwood, The year of the flood

Isabel Allende, The house of the spirits

María Gainza, Optic nerve

Piet Paaltjens, Snikken en grimlachjes

Arthur Miller, Death of a salesman

Anja Meulenbelt, Feminisme: terug van nooit weggeweest

Feminism: en antologi

Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

Caroline Knapp, Appetites: Why women want

Jean Rhys, Voyage in the dark

Euripides, Electra

Euripides, The Phoenician women

Euripides, The Bacchae

Jean Rhys, La grosse Fifi

Odysseas Elytis, The axion esti

Hilda Newman & Tim Tate, Diamonds at dinner

Julie Orringer, How to breathe underwater

Richard Brautigan, Revenge of the lawn

Jane Campion, The piano (screenplay)

Jean Rhys, Quartet

Emma Cline, The girls

Arnon Grunberg, Tirza

Karen Blixen, Ehrengard

Alain de Botton, Religion for atheists

Arthur Japin, De overgave

[kolyarostov]

The Flight Portfolio, pg. 8, Julie Orringer

[overlookedwwiimedia]

Transatlantic (2023)

Basic Story: European refugees wait in Marseilles while the Emergency Rescue Committee attempts to get them visas out of Europe.

Fan Thoughts: Transatlantic is loosely based on the novel The Flight Portfolio by Julie Orringer, turned into a miniseries by Daniel Hendler and Anna Winger (Deutschland 83, Deutschland 86, Deutschland 89, Unorthodox).  In Marseilles under the Vichy Government, the Emergency Rescue Committee (ERC), founded by Varian Fry and Mary Jayne Gold, are working to get artists and intellectuals on a ‘Most Wanted’ list compiled by the Nazis out of Europe and to safety.  Assisting the ERC are other refugees Albert Hirshman and Lisa Fittko, who initially help to guide people over the mountains into Spain.  Over its seven episodes, not only are the actions of the ERC shown, but all those who did what they could to assist refugees in their escape from fascism.  While their level of involvement differs widely, their actions, and every other characters’, all aid the same goal and highlight the many different ways civilians helped people escape.  Juxtaposed against those who helped are several characters who refuse to lend their aid or focus only on their own interests, specifically American companies looking to sell to countries on both sides of the war, and extremely limiting American policies that turned away boats full of refugees in New York.  While touching on these overreaching policies, there is also a purposeful focus on people; the ERC operates out of Villa Air-Bel, a mansion in the countryside where people wait while their visa applications are processed. While they are waiting they find time to throw birthday parties, dance, sing, and generally feel as human as they can in front of the immense danger they face if their visas are not granted.  Not only does this series have the scope to focus in on individual people and pull back for a broader view, it has a somewhat light, adventurous feel created in part by Mary Jayne whose commitment to her missions is only matched by her cheer and eagerness to help.  The adventurous spirit of this show makes it a enjoyable and easy watch that carries you along through the ups and downs and loopholes of getting as many people as possible out of Europe in the 1940s.

Warnings: on-screen deaths

Available On: Netflix

[freakoutgirl]

short stories that have stuck with me over the years

Tiny, Smiling Daddy by Mary Gaitskill

People Like That are the Only People Here by Lorrie Moore

The Cavemen in the Hedges by Stacey Richter

The Half-Skinned Steer by Annie E. Proulx

Real Women Have Bodies by Carmen Maria Machado

Bloodchild by Octavia Butler

The Small Assassin by Ray Bradbury

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas by Ursula Le Guin

Stone Animals by Kelly Link

A Real Doll by A.M. Holmes

Bartleby by Herman Melville

The Ceiling by Kevin Brockmeier

Eleven by Sandra Cisneros 

Pilgrims by Julie Orringer

The Way We Live Now by Susan Sontag

[shojoboy]

Reading & enjoying Surrender On Demand is making me even more suspicious of the “fictionalized” novel by Julie Orringer. I don’t want to completely disregard historical novels fictionalizing real people, I’m sure there’s some good ones, but….when you have The Actual Guy’s comprehensive autobiography as a source material, and it’s also very entertaining with great characterizations of all the people he worked with….why write a novel about him? Like I get it when you have mysterious blanks to fill in…but not when the real story is so well documented! What did she think she had to add that was more valuable or interesting than Varian Fry’s own ACTUAL THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS?

I also feel uncomfortable with the whole “cishet woman rewrites a closeted gay man’s life story and gives him a fictional boy crush” thing. Like idc that she’s writing abt him being gay, I think it is nice to acknowledge that….but fully making up this relationship and imagining how he felt about something he was very, very private about…it feels like overstepping a boundary that she maybe shouldn’t.

It also feels different than if she had written a fictionalized version of a very iconic historical figure, like Joan of Arc….because figures like Joan are so iconic, well known and portrayed often, it’s very easy to recognize and accept that a fictional Joan is just that, fictional. But most people today don’t know who Varian Fry is. When you fictionalize a person like that, you run the risk of having your fake version be the only one people know - overtaking and erasing the real Fry and his real words and story.

IDK. I might be too harsh considering I haven’t read the novel but. I gotta say I still have no interest in it. When it comes to history where there’s available source documents, and actual historians compiling them, I’m perfectly satisfied with sticking to those.

[antonio-velardo]

Antonio Velardo shares: Two Books for a Mental Vacation by Unknown Author

By Unknown Author Madeleine L’Engle’s domestic memoir; Julie Orringer’s humane short stories Published: October 28, 2023 at 07:50AM from NYT Books https://ift.tt/DRoYfkt via IFTTT

[imgonnagetkilledbynutstink]

For absolutely no reason at all, my Goodreads and Letterboxd

[ziadanworld]

7 مسلسلات مثل مسلسل Transatlantic شاهدها الآن

حتى في خضم النداءات المدمرة للمعركة ، فإن صوت الموسيقى الجليل والضربات الضعيفة للفرشاة يترددان بصوت عالٍ. يمثل الفن ، في مركزه ، عددًا لا يحصى من الأشياء. ليس من المستغرب ، على هذا النحو ، يركز مسلسل Transatlantic على كيفية وقوف السامريين للفنانين من جميع مناحي ، حتى في خضم خطر الحرب العالمية الثانية. المسلسل مقتبس من كتاب Julie Orringer الذي يؤرخ لأحداث الحياة الواقعية. المسلسل الذي ابتكره آنا…

[elflandsdaughter]

It's impossible to believe how gone she is, how untouchable. She's the only one who doesn't have to know what it's like here on Earth without her.

Julie Orringer, from the short story “Isabel Fish” in the collection How to Breathe Underwater

[nedlittle]

hello - don’t feel like you have to answer this - i really admire how much you read and the variety of books you review. i am trying to read more in 2023, but i have a hard time finding things i like and an even harder time finishing books that don’t grab me by the 70ish page mark. do you mind sharing bit of insight on how you find what you like and, more to the point, how you get yourself to finish a book that you know is going to be a 2 star review maximum well before you’re done?

anon i am SO sorry for letting this rot in my inbox for over a month, i genuinely have not had the time to give you the answer you deserve. this is going to be long, so i'm going to divide it into two main parts

part i: how to find things you like.

the easiest advice i can give is just to think about books you like and what you enjoy about them. my favourite genre is historical fiction, but i like a very specific type of historical fiction that i have difficulty explaining bc it's vibes-based. largely queer historical fiction that interrogates its setting rather than using it as a backdrop for modern characters in period clothing; i'm not huge on historical family sagas, but i do love when the style is a little fucky. i like reading classics, mainly mid-late 19th century and mid-20th century ones as historical artifacts, i like comparing and contrasting similar texts like i'm writing a book report, and i like purple prose. i like some fantasy and sci-fi but not a lot because i'm a big dumb-dumb with complex worldbuilding and think that some genres, like urban fantasy are just a little silly, this is my subjective taste. think about what you don't like and why you don't like it with the same amount of thought. that's step 1.

so, you've figured out what you do and do not like. now, to find more of the same. if your author is alive and has a web presence, check out what they recommend on social media, check out books they've blurbed. you may not have the same taste as the authors you like and god knows i've read at least 3 books because alison epstein recommended them and i really liked her debut novel only to find that her taste and mine don't always align. do the same with your friends, even if they may not have the same taste. ask them what a five-star read is to them. ask the little tumblr people in your phone. it's okay to have caveats. whenever i ask for book recs on here, i clarify that i am not interested in reading a little life and i probably never will be.

if you look for book recs everywhere, like i do, you will find them. try something your favourite podcast host recommends! read lists of new releases in a genre of your choice!

anon i don't know what your local library sitch is. mine has a great website for finding similar books. the example i'm using here is my fave read of 2021, the flight portfolio by julie orringer

if you click on the covers it will tell you why these titles are recommended, mostly for shared subject matter and setting, occasionally for stylistic or thematic similarities. none of these books appeal to me, but if i scroll down a little more...

fucking bingo. so, because i am me, i am going to select "lgbtqia" and "historical fiction", maybe "stylistically complex" if i want to narrow it down

it gave me 12 books total that are available at my local library. of the first four, i have read three (adored one, points if you guess which one), and the remaining book is on my tbr.

the storygraph is also fantastic for recommendations, though like all recommendations, they're hit-or-miss. if you have an account, which i recommend, and i also recommend you add me if you do @/kitnotmarlowe because that way you can keep up with the saga of me unintentionally reading books where lesbians have threesomes and a ghost is involved somehow. but if you have an account, you get recommendations right on your homepage that you can filter by length, genre, mood etc

sorry this is 5 px i had to zoom out to get all the available options. you can also sort your reading preferences including fave genres (up to 5), the kind of books you like reading (open-ended and comma separated), characteristics you appreciate most (up to 3), genres you aren't currently interested in (as many as you want, i currently have 26), things that turn you off books the most (up to 3), and books that you're never in the mood for (as many as you want, the only one i have marked is 'relaxing'). you can ask for specific recommendations without changing your preferences if you want something specific NOW and you have the option of browsing similar books for any of the books in their database

now that that's out of the way, onto...

part ii: how do you finish books that aren't good

here's the secret: you don't have to. life is too short to commit to finishing something you aren't interested in or upset by or simply not vibing with. as a kid i used to be really bad with this and finished every single book i read even if it scared the absolute shit out of me (wuthering high by cara lockwood) or accidentally exposed me to baby's first sex scene (have been trying to remember what book this is for YEARS). if something isn't gripping you by the 70 page mark, put it down. unless you're reading it for school or being paid to review it. sometimes you just don't vibe with a book! maybe you'll pick it up later, maybe you won't and that's fine. i tried reading a historical romance last year but got so distressed by the politics and stupid understanding of suffrage that i quit before i was halfway.

"how you get yourself to finish a book that you know is going to be a 2 star review maximum well before you’re done"

if you look at my worst books of 2022, you'll see that over half of them are dogshit historical mysteries that i finished solely to try and solve the mystery, even if they were written with all the poise and skill of a fast food receipt or utterly nonsensical or colonial in a way i didn't expect to find in the 21st century. i am a hater at heart. i have an entire tag devoted to books i've finished out of spite. sometimes you finish a book you think is dogshit so that you can Tell The World (or at least your friends) that it is dogshit and get all your feelings out and once you have achieved catharsis you can read something new. sometimes you think a book is dogshit and nobody else really agrees and you feel like you're in the twilight zone so you write out your thoughts and release them unto the internet.

i'm of the opinion that a bad book can be as instructive as a great one. you can take apart a bad book and figure out what works (for you personally and for the book from a craft standpoint). this is a pro-litcrit blog even if it's just you writing a 2000 word review of a book approximately 5 people have read JUST so you can send it to a friend and have them empathize with your suffering. taking literature apart is fun! sometimes you have to power through an awful book before you can read a great one

sorry that this is so long but i hope it was a bit helpful. my inbox is always open to requests for recommendations no matter how niche. go forth and read widely!

[justforbooks]

Όταν οι στρατιές του Χίτλερ κατέλαβαν την Ευρώπη, πολλοί διανοούμενοι, καλλιτέχνες και συγγραφείς αναγκάστηκαν να την εγκαταλείψουν και να καταφύγουν στην Αμερική. Μετά την ήττα της Γαλλίας στον Β’ Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο, η Ευρώπη έχασε μερικά από τα καλύτερα μυαλά της, γιατί άρχισαν μαζικά να μεταναστεύουν στις ΗΠΑ.

Το βιβλίο της Τζούλι Όριντζερ περιγράφει με συναρπαστικό τρόπο το χρονικό αυτής της εξόδου. Τον Αύγουστο του 1940 ο Αμερικανός δημοσιογράφος Βάριαν Φράι φτάνει στη Μασσαλία για μια φαινομενικά ακατόρθωτη αποστολή: να φυγαδεύσει, με ελάχιστα μέσα, σημαντικές προσωπικότητες της διανόησης και λαμπρά πνεύματα όπως οι Αντρέ Μπρετόν, Μαρκ Σαγκάλ, Χάνα Άρεντ, Μαξ Έρνστ και Χάινριχ Μαν για να γλιτώσουν από τους ναζιστές.

Ο Φράι, επί έναν χρόνο, με κίνδυνο της ζωής του, τους εξασφαλίζει πλαστά έγγραφα και δημιουργεί ένα κρυφό δίκτυο διάσωσης, παρακάμπτοντας τα εμπόδια των γαλλικών Αρχών αλλά και του προξενείου της χώρας του. Συγχρόνως, είναι μπλεγμένος και με τις προσωπικές του ιστορίες: μια κρυφή ερωτική σχέση τον οδηγεί σε μεγάλα διλήμματα.

Η ιστορία του βιβλίου βασίζεται σε αληθινά γεγονότα, τα οποία μπλέκονται με τη μυθοπλασία και την κρυφή ερωτική ζωή ενός ομοφυλόφιλου στην Αμερική στα μέσα του εικοστού αιώνα, σε ένα μυθιστόρημα που διαβάζεται με κομμένη την ανάσα από την αρχή μέχρι το τέλος.

Ο Φράι ίδρυσε στη Μασσαλία το Αμερικανικό Κέντρο Διάσωσης και με θυσίες και αμέτρητες δυσκολίες κατάφερε, στους δεκαπέντε μήνες που πρόλαβε να δράσει μέχρι να απελαθεί, να φυγαδεύσει όχι μόνο τους 200 της αρχικής λίστας αλλά και χιλιάδες ακόμη καταζητούμενους Εβραίους και Βρετανούς στρατιώτες. Με απίστευτες περιπέτειες κατάφερε να εκδώσει αμέτρητες βίζες και να σώσει καταδιωκόμενους τόσο από τους ναζιστές όσο και από το καθεστώς του Βισύ.

Η δουλειά που έχει κάνει η Θεοδώρα Δαρβίση στη μετάφραση είναι εξαιρετική.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[kolyarostov]

-The Flight Portfolio, pg. 10, Julie Orringer

[debbierhea]

"He felt the stirring of a new ache, something like homesickness but located deeper in his mind; it was an ache for the time when his heart had been a simple and satisfied thing, small as the green apples that grew in his father's orchard.

- Julie Orringer, The Invisible Bridge