“The adjectives which really suited grown-ups were ‘lily-livered’ and ‘chicken-hearted.’" --Mary in Rebecca West's The Fountain Overflows (more recently encountered by me in @appletwigli.bsky.social's story "Any Human Heart")

In @groene.nl - Yiyun Li 💚 @appletwigli.bsky.social @4thestatebooks.bsky.social #nieuwamsterdam

“Two moments in Graham Greene’s published life have often returned to me in the past twenty years. This may sound strange: an ideal reader should refrain from crossing the boundary between a writer’s work and his life.” Yiyun Li on Graham Greene. buff.ly/M9gqQF9

"The humanities tell us who we are. Without them, we're automata." Edward Carey, Celsius 232 Festival, Avilés, Spain.

Reading Yiyun Li’s latest memoir “Things in Nature Merely Grow,” Ali Moss reflects on her responsibilities and limitations as a parent. electricliterature.com/yiyun-lis-la...

“There is no redemption arc in ‘Things in Nature Merely Grow,’ no arrival at a deeper meaning of life after the tragedies of Vincent and James’s suicides.” Jenessa Abrams reviews Yiyun Li’s "Things in Nature Merely Grow." https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/children-die-and-parents-go-on-living/

“Fortunately, fiction allows one the space to complicate matters and dispel the innocence of any image.” Yiyun Li discusses her short story “Any Human Heart.”

“And here sat Maureen, who had no one else to send flowers to as sweet revenge. And here sat Lilian, who had thought that little in life could surprise her anymore.” Read a new short story by Yiyun Li.

“Not calling a fact by its name can be the beginning of cruelty and injustice.” —Yiyun Li #SundaySentence

Lovely essay in memory of Edmund White by @appletwigli.bsky.social yalereview.org/article/yiyu...

“We both took pleasure in being irrelevant and irreverent and unflappable.” Today in TYR, Yiyun Li pays tribute to her friend, the late Edmund White.

The latest book by @appletwigli.bsky.social absolutely devastated me with its beauty and grace so I wrote about it for @washingtonpost.com www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...

Farewell my love

From @appletwigli.bsky.social 's story collection Wednesday's Child: Perhaps grief was the recognition of having run out of illusions. #SundaySentence #Booksky

The pain of this book, and its immense beauty @appletwigli.bsky.social 💚

I just finished Things in Nature Merely Grow by @appletwigli.bsky.social and am disrupted, moved, challenged in ways I did not expect. I write a lot about grief and..... will be carrying this magnificent book and its refusal of grief inside me for a long time ahead. #Booksky

“I’ve been on this crusade against metaphor for years,” Yiyun Li tells Manjula Martin in this conversation. “I think metaphors are not helpful when you are writing about things that are very hard to tackle.” For garden lovers, metaphor haters, and those learning to accept grief.

A longish post. I don’t think I’ve ever read a more truthful book – and nor, therefore, a more humane book than Things in Nature Merely Grow. Yiyun Li’s philosophical and psychic reckoning with the loss of both her sons is soaked in what Graham Greene once referred to as ‘the dignity of despair’. >

uncommon grace, yes 💚 thank you @appletwigli.bsky.social for writing Things in Nature Merely Grow, which will be out Tuesday

This. Again and again. No one has written the heart like @appletwigli.bsky.social— her words are foundational for me, as a writer, a human, and a mother. Always.

All the love to @appletwigli.bsky.social, who has written a book of staggering heartbreak and uncommon grace.

Dan Piepenbring reviews Yiyun Li’s memoir Things in Nature Merely Grow. buff.ly/DuBkCC5

"When mass protests broke out against his policy, Biden repeatedly condemned the activists as violent and antisemitic, responding to outlier actions that didn’t represent the movement. Biden’s slander helped splinter the Democratic coalition, giving Trump a potent wedge issue." shorturl.at/K4cPI

Not often that you get to spend an hour talking about a story you worked on. Thanks to Radiowest on @kuer.org. radiowest.kuer.org/show/radiowe...

Floored by Yiyun Li’s excavation of time, bereavement, the inadequacy of language around death, and how to live after unimaginable things happen. Things in Nature Merely Grow is out in May. www.4thestate.co.uk/products/thi...

"This personal history by @appletwigli.bsky.social left me in pieces. She writes in spare, unadorned prose and opens with an almost clinical study of the words delivered by a police officer: 'There is no good way to say this.'" -Guest editor @michaelluo.bsky.social www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Yiyun Li’s new book — from which this essay is excerpted — is one of the most beautifully controlled expressions of grief and anger and abyss I’ve ever read.

“My husband and I had two children and lost them both: Vincent in 2017, at 16, James in 2024, at 19,” the author Yiyun Li writes. “Both chose suicide.”

#ThursdayThoughts #ThursdayMotivation #reading #books writingforwellbeing.co.uk

Thought maybe I'd distract myself with reading.

Remembered an old Chinese joke. Clinton said to Jiang Zemin: in the US we have the freedom of speech and any American citizen can criticize the president. Jiang said: in China we have the freedom of speech too, as any Chinese citizen can criticize American president.

"People are sometimes presumptuous, at other times predictable, but often they are both." New story by Yiyun Li (@appletwigli.bsky.social) in the New Yorker www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

“Perhaps it is futility—more than pain, more than humiliation, more than death—that haunts one.” New fiction by Yiyun Li.

It’s a beautiful day when there is a new story from Yiyun Li. ❤️ podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

A good teaching moment: I rewrote a Marilynne Robinson paragraph the way the students are wont to do, then asked them to compare that with the original… 😌

Proof of book. bookshop.org/p/books/a-lo...

Witch hazel being ridiculous

Saint Petersburg became Leningrad and became Saint Petersburg again. Names are as temporary as czars and emperors.

It’s a bummer that “Americanism” is often accompanied by anti-intellectualism. Bummer how ignorance is a source of pride in the US.

Join us online and in New York City on February 12th for the release of a new anthology of New Yorker fiction, curated from the magazine’s first hundred years. Subscribers receive a discount.

Devoured this in one sitting last night. A masterpiece. @appletwigli.bsky.social @fsgbooks.bsky.social

Word of the Day is ‘bayard’ (16th century): one who has the supreme self-confidence of ignorance.

Climate change will manifest as a series of Go Fund Mes, getting closer and closer to your circle of acquaintance, until the Go Fund Me is yours.

Final teenager in the house: Quintus turns thirteen today

“Despite—or, perhaps, because of—“ PLEASE STOP

It’s so weird how many whistleblowers seem to kill themselves. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

That’s how!