Karen’s Comments (group member since Apr 06, 2020)

Karen’s comments from the Classy and Trashy Book Club with the Moorhead Public Library group.

I'm planning to be there Tuesday night after the Listening Session.

I'm currently listening to The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller because I heard about a Zoom discussion with her coming up. It's not bad and is keeping my attention, but a lot of characters experience sexual abuse and it's depressing.

I've also been listening to more of the Amelia Peabody and Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency mysteries.

Non-fiction that I've liked recently include The Great Bridge by David McCullough about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge (which my father told me about before he died, so I've been meaning to read it for a while) and The Book of Joy by the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu.

I've also been listening to lots of book group choices (as always for me - LOL) and I've started reading Hamlet as the classic read for my online board.

ETA: Hi Kathy! I got the email notice of your comment as I was typing this, but then I got an error posting, so I tried to make sure mine would post before coming back to add this.

I couldn't find you on a search either, Kathy, but when I clicked on your name where it is blue above your post it took me right to you and I friended you, so I think you should be able to accept or whatever and we should be good.

Long day of meetings and work today, so I'll try to tell you about my recent reading tomorrow.

I haven't actually been reading anything on text format (I've been doing a lot of Kakuro puzzles and some random other things), but I've been listening quite a bit. I listened to The Name of the Wind for the upcoming discussion and loved it all over again. That was a long one. And, I listened to and enjoyed Magpie Murders.

I'm also trying to listen to some of the books on my TBR list. Those include 3 books I won last year in Book Blizzard, so I just finished The Last Train to London by Meg Waite Clayton and started The Hidden Hours by Sara Foster. I hope to get to the third soon too.

And, on a recommendation from a friend, I listened to The Little Shop of Found Things, which I liked but didn't love. And, I had heard about Brown Girls somewhere because I had put it on hold and it came in for me. It was told in kind of first person plural "we" which is unusual (though I read one like that about Astronaut Wives or something a while back) and it took me a little while to get used to that, but I ended up liking it too.

Oh, and I listened to Lin Enger's The High Divide because I've been meaning to for a while and liked that, but not as much as I hoped, and not as much as at least one of his other books.

Book Blizzard starts Jan 1? Is that right?

The big thing in my recent reading was the new Outlander book, Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone. I read it in the week after it was released and listened to the audiobook in the past week. It was exciting to get a new book after a 7.5 year wait.

Other recent books that I've really liked have been Katherine by Anya Seton (historical fic about Katherine Swynford who was ancestress to a bunch of British kings and queens, including all the Tudors), the first Murderbot novel after four novellas, Network Effect, and CJ Sansom's Revelation, the 4th in the Shardlake series of Tudor mysteries. I've liked other stuff too, but I think these the most in the recent past.

Kathy - I really enjoyed This Rough Magic. More than I expected to, so I encourage you to read it if you get the chance. The book I got from the book sale, had that and two other Mary Stewart novels combined and I plan to read the second one soon since I liked it so much.

I recently listened to the new William Kent Krueger book Lightning Strike and the new Louise Penny book The Madness of Crowds and really liked both.

I also listened to The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood based on a recommendation and liked that a surprising amount considering that it is a fairly typical romance and that doesn't tend to be my favorite genre. This one is set among academics at Stanford and there are some surface similarities with one of my advisors back when I was in school. She started dating her husband while she was a grad student and he was a professor at Stanford.

Oh and I read Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi for an online book club and she is a very talented writer. This was her debut novel and it is a sweeping multi-generational story set in part in Ghana and I thought it was impressive and immersive as we meet different characters over time. I also really liked her novel Transcendant Kingdom which was written later but I read first.

I just started the second Matthew Shardlake novel, Dark Fire, by CJ Sansom because I was excited to discover that Hoopla had it on audio.

Oh, and in terms of actual reading of a paper book (since I listen to far more audiobooks), while traveling I read one of the Kate Shugak books A Fine and Bitter Snow by Dana Stabenow and now I am reading The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff, which was second on a UK list of the 10 best historical fiction novels, so I was intrigued. I hope to finish it this weekend since text has been taking me forever since I listen a lot but don't sit down to read all that often.

I just saw your comment. I am a little over halfway through Wild Sign right now. I'm liking it so far, but I tend to like the Mercy Thompson books more than the Alpha and Omega ones (they are interconnected series, for those who don't know about Patricia Briggs' books), so I'm not sure this will end up being a favorite. But, we'll see. Another friend who read it as an ARC mentioned that the end left a lot of threads for future books to tie up.

Before that, I finished The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah, which was very good, but really sad. I cried at multiple points. I also learned about what life was like during the Dust Bowl, which was something I learned about very briefly in school and from reading The Grapes of Wrath, but this gave me a much more personal idea of what the experience might have been like for those who lived through it.

Prior to that, I listened to the one I mentioned called Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez. I thought it was very good and full of information and things I hadn't thought about. But it made me MAD!!!!

I liked the books by Erin Hart that I've read, but it's been a while. I don't think I've read The Book of Killowen yet, but I really should.

I finished listening to this yesterday (I think - or maybe Thursday night?). It was kind of funny to have what felt a lot like classic noir mixed with fantasy creatures, but Luke Arnold narrated his own book and I thought he did a great job. Looking forward to discussion on Tuesday.

Right now, I am listening to The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, which I've been meaning to read since we read and all enjoyed The Woman in White in an earlier iteration (or at least earlier name) for this group. I'm liking it so far except for some of the comments about women (as if a young woman having thoughts of her own is a bad thing - sigh).

The previous audiobook that I finished was Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore which is the March selection for Pop Lit and I liked it a lot. I knew nothing about it going in, but ended up really enjoying it. In fact, I felt a little bad giving it 4 stars since I gave several recent things that rating and I liked this more than some of them, but I wasn't quite sure if I was ready to give it 5 stars since I so rarely give those (though I seem to be more comfortable giving non-fiction 5 stars than I am about fiction, not entirely sure why).

I'm also still working through the second part of Don Quixote with my online group and I think we are all enjoying the second part more than the first. We're more than halfway through this second part now so the end is at least vaguely in sight.

Other recent listens (I haven't actually been reading any books at the moment - though I do read bits of newspapers and some magazines) were Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy Sayers due to discussions on that Classic Crime Fiction course I mentioned (that I still need to finish) and I've liked all the Lord Peter Wimsey ones I've read and Martin Eden by Jack London for the Fargo Classics Book Club, which I'd never heard of even though I've read others of his books and that was good too. And, the other looooong thing I listened to was Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann which is a 45+ hour long (over 1000 pages) almost entirely stream of consciousness book with maybe 10 sentences (other than a few short sections about a mother mountain lioness). I know that sounds really awful, but it was nominated for several awards and won at least one (relating to the How to Read a Novel online course I've done a few times) and I liked it more than I expected to and found it an unexpectedly pleasant listen.

Kathy - The is the link to the course: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/c... You can join now, though the second week has started. You have free access for 2 weeks past the official end of the course so that hopefully would be plenty of time to catch up if you want to. There are a LOT of comments in this one (hundreds on most steps), but I don't read all of them. Usually just some of the newest ones and then the "Most Liked" threads. I'm enjoying it.

I'm currently doing a free online course about Classic Detective Fiction (which, BTW, I think you'd really find interesting Deb, if you have time to check it out - I emailed you, but got your automatic out of office message). So, in the past couple of days I've listened to Talking About Detective Fiction by P. D. James, The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Dupin Stories by Edgar Allan Poe, and The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle. The latter two are focused on in the course and the first was mentioned by other people in the comments and was interesting to hear as I was learning similar stuff in the course.

Apart from that, I finished The Children's Book by AS Byatt, which is the Outlander Book Club choice for March, Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield (highly recommended by people on another lit based course), Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue, Dear Miss Kopp by Amy Stewart and The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley.

The Kopp sisters one was interesting in that it was told completely in letters since the three sisters were separated for almost all of the book. The others haven't been like that. Apparently, the author doesn't have any info about what they were doing during WWI, so this one isn't based on known facts, but now she can get back to what she knows they were doing after the war.

I'm planning to be there. I'm listening to the book right now (well, not while I'm typing, but you know what I mean - LOL).

Wow! It's been a long time since I popped in here. Right now, I am listening to Beauchamp Hall (which is a tad early since we're not discussing for another 9 days, but I borrowed it earlier so it's going to be due and I wanted to make sure to finish it). My other recent listens were Foundation by Isaac Asimov and Meg & Jo by Virginia Kantra, both of which are for book discussions this week. I'm reading Fire From Heaven by Mary Renault, which was highly recommended to me by multiple people. It's about Alexander the Great (his childhood/youth in this first of a trilogy). I'm finding it a good read, but not a quick one.

Well, it wasn't an easy book... December is To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, which I haven't read but came up on one of my free online courses, so I'm planning to listen and go to the group again. Assuming I can keep up with all the audiobooks that keep coming in for me.

This time, it was just the two group leaders and two of us who really discussed. There was one other guy who phoned in with no video and when the leader talked to him at the beginning he said he had read parts of the book, but he never contributed again and we were hearing noises later that sounded like they might have been snores, so she muted him. LOL

At an earlier meeting, there were more people than that. I don't recall how many but my best guess might be 7-10? I can't remember for sure because it was back in July.

Yes, Kathy, I did attend the Classics group discussion. That's why I read Bury Your Heart now. I had heard about it over the years, but never read it before so this gave me the impetus to final listen to it. It is very fact-heavy without a lot of analysis, but that's probably in part due to when it was written when these things really weren't discussed so it was good to have all the facts together.

I'm pretty sure I listened to Redhead a while back and liked it. I have not read Ivan Denisovich, but a friend read it in the past year or so and said it was pretty good. It's on my mental list for someday.

I finished Lin Enger's book last night and enjoyed it. Stayed up a tiny bit too late, but I was so close to the end...

Now I'm listening to The Great Influenza by John Barry, which I'm finding interesting and a little easier going than I thought it might be.

I'm almost done listening to A Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich which is the latest One Book, One Minnesota choice. And, I just started reading American Gospel by Lin Enger, who will be speaking on Dec 8 at the exact same time as Erdrich is speaking for that One Book thing. Sigh. I'm sure I'll watch both presentations, though I'll have to decide which to watch live and which to watch later.

I listened to Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown which was extremely informative and I'm glad I read it, but it was incredibly depressing and anger-inducing.

On a lighter note, I listened to and really enjoyed Spoiler Alert which is mostly a romance, but includes more serious topics such as body shaming and learning disabilities. I needed something light at that time and really just liked it a lot.

I've listened to the two Horowitz books in which he was a character, but not his other books. Maybe someday, but at the moment I am drowning in audiobooks that keep becoming available for me and I'm trying to train myself to put fewer on hold...

I have started listening to it and so far so good.

I don't usually actually stop reading/listening to a book but there are times that I keep hoping to get to the end of something because I am just not enjoying it at that time. So, I can be a moody listener/reader, but I usually plow through anyway. Which may not be a good thing, but there you go...

Thanks Kathy. But, I don't need a medal since I find the reading reward in itself. It helps that I've been listening to the most recent few audiobooks at 2.25x speed. I wouldn't be able to get through nearly as many books if I couldn't listen at high speeds. And, the slow narration might drive me nuts, too. LOL

I finished The Evening and the Morning and ended up giving it 4 stars on here, but might have given it 4.5 if that had been an option. I did really like it and things didn't happen quite the way I predicted, though some was kind of similar. It was only predictability that bugged me. Otherwise, it was great! I like all his historical fiction, though I haven't read many of his earlier spy/thrillers.

The Chaperone came in for me too, but I'm currently listening to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and I might have to listen to one other before I get to it.