TeaTime.Pictures

thanks @time for the love!❤️ (still streaming on @peacock btw)

🌕🌖🌗 Valeria Luiselli’s novel opens the morning a mother and her teenage daughter arrive in Sicily, during a summer of rapidly-changing winds, volcanic rumbles, and sudden tempests. They’ve landed near the ancient ruins where the narrator’s grandmother worked long ago on an archaeological dig. How do you begin again, the mother wonders, pondering her family line, and what if the new beginning you’re imagining is actually the end? While the mother tries to figure out how to reconstruct their lives together—cooking meals side by side, reading out loud to each other, playing chess, bickering and making-up—her deeply intelligent, inquisitive daughter begins to take the reins of the story. She becomes increasingly curious about her great-grandmother’s past as a digger in archaeological sites and ancient tombs, and urges her mother to leave their enclosed day-to-day in search for answers about their family’s past and future.  Beginning Middle End evolves into a road novel of exquisite tenderness. In their drive through Sicily, mother and daughter cross paths with the island’s migrants, storekeepers, and elders, but also its volcanoes, its winds and its waters. As their trip progresses, it becomes a journey to origins—not just to the familial past across continents, languages, and generations, but also further back to a mythical and geological past. With her own mother showing signs of dementia, the narrator confronts the primary questions of life: Where is home? Where do we dwell and seek safety? How are a family’s memories made and what happens when they disappear?

This month we’re reading BEGINNING MIDDLE END by @valeria_luiselli . It’s the tale of a mother and daughter traveling together after the collapse of a marriage and the dissolution of their traditional family structure.

〰️💙〰️ Innovative and deeply poetic, this landmark work of literary fiction, The Waves, is often regarded as Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece. It begins with six children―three boys and three girls―playing in a garden by the sea, and follows their lives as they grow up, experience friendship and love, and grapple with the death of their beloved friend Percival. Instead of describing their outward expressions of grief, Woolf uses a groundbreaking stream of consciousness style to draw her characters from the inside, revealing their inner lives: their aspirations, their triumphs and regrets, their awareness of unity and isolation.

This month we’re reading one of Dakota’s favorites – THE WAVES by Virginia Woolf. It’s truly incredible.

All things MARE curated by @emilyhaworthbooth 🩵🏇🩵 Reading List 1. Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi  2. The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante 3. Foster by Claire Keegan  4. No-one Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood  5. Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami  6. Motherhood by Sheila Heti  Watchlist 1. Horse Girl on Netflix 2. National Velvet on HBO MAX 3. Marnie on Prime 4. Lean on Pete on Netflix 5. Best in Show on Netflix 6. The Baby on HBO MAX Playlist 1. Baby Love by The Supremes 2. The End of the World by Skeeter Davis 3. This Woman’s Work by Kate Bush 4. Lullaby 4 Nina by The Durutti Column 5. Martha My Dear by The Beatles 6. Horses by Patti Smith 7. Back In the Saddle Again by Gene Autry  8. A Horse with No Name by America  9. Pony by Tom Waits

💫🐴💫 For a long time, a woman lives with her husband and their dog. She teaches an online class about children’s books and plods away at a book of her own. Then the dog dies, and a doctor’s visit reveals that she isn’t able to have children, even if she wanted to. When an opportunity to lease a mare part-time comes her way, it seems like the ideal arrangement and the fulfillment of a childhood wish—perhaps even something to fill the emptiness, diagnosable and otherwise, that she has begun to feel. She has no problem sharing; she shares a garden with the children next door and chores with her husband. The horse will be something to care for, just two days a week, without getting in too deep. But as she takes up riding lessons, faces mounting medical bills, and walks and brushes and dreams of the horse, her affection starts to become all-consuming. Time spent with the mare casts a light on the rest of her responsibilities and relationships, ultimately forcing her to confront what it means to love a being who does not belong to her. With tender humor and insight, Emily Haworth-Booth’s Mare radiates life and feeling—and introduces an irresistible literary voice. Get your copy from @bookshop_org and support indie bookstores. Use code TTJune26 at checkout for 15% off. Offer good through the end of the month.