Laurel’s Comments (group member since Dec 30, 2013)

Laurel’s comments from the All About Books group.

#44 Strange Planet
4 red stars

#45 Stranger Planet
5 blue stars

Bought for a gift, so I had to read them! I've enjoyed these comics on the web. There are some new ones here.

Pages: 13,613

#43 Summer at the Garden Café
3 green stars - Very slow-moving and too many jumbled up plot threads, but I do like the characters and the community.

Only 1 book behind now. I'm catching up!

#42 Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man
3.5 pink stars. Like watching someone tear the legs off a fly.

Pages: 12,937

#41 Beneath a Scarlet Sky
4.5 blue stars rounded up. Reads like a young adult novel, but there is considerable violence, so be forewarned. Based on a true story, and it's a good one.

Pages: 12,716

#40 The Pull of the Stars
4.5 blue stars rounded up

My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Pages read: 12,203

#39 The Hare and the Moon: A Book of Paintings
5 blue stars

A bonus! I forgot I bought this book at the beginning of the year. I think I meant to "read" this a month at a time. Really, it only took about 15 minutes to read the whole thing, but I'll treasure it over and over for the lovely artwork. My copy of the book has the subtitle "A Calendar of Paintings" rather than A Book of Paintings.

Mid-October and I need to finish 14 more books to reach my goal. Started at some point in the year and still not finished, so these have priority:
READ 1. War and Peace
READ 2. Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia - this one had to go back to the library, so I actually bought the e-book. No excuse now.
READ 3. Beneath a Scarlet Sky- this month's Daytimer's book club book. Currently listening.
READ 4. Summer at the Garden Café - put aside for #3 above, but I will finish it.
READ 5. The Demon's Brood: A History of the Plantagenet Dynasty - started this quite a few years ago, and really shouldn't be hard to read at least a few pages before bed each night, so I can cross this one off....
6. Queen By Right - put on hold
7. One for Sorrow - put on hold
8. reread of Outlander - I need to get back to this!
About to start:
READ 9. The Pull of the Stars - holds waiting for this one, so I need to prioritize it. Due back to the library at the end of October.
10. Troubled Blood - Can't wait!
READ 11. This Tender Land - November's Daytimer's book
READ 12. The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek - December's Daytimer's book

Two more to prioritize, so I pick these:
13. From Hand to Hand: the Welsh novel O Law I Law - for A Good Yarn's T is for Translation theme
14. The Giver of Stars - Former Daytimer's Dec. book

READ 15. Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man - had a hold on this and it just came in (10/30) and it's fairly short, so I'm going to squeeze it in.

Other options:
The Summer Queen
Mud and Stars: Travels in Russia with Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Other Geniuses of the Golden Age
Bloodline
Rebecca - reread to kick off my "Winter" theme? And I need an R title for A Good Yarn
The Plum Tree - Good Yarn T is for Tree theme
The Personal History of Rachel DuPree - Good Yarn P is for Personal, and a P title

#38 Hamnet
5 stars and a rare gold rating. Exquisitely written.

My review is here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Pages: 11755

#34 Elvis Puffs Out: A Breaking Cat News Adventure
5 stars - I adore this comic strip!

#35-37 The Unicorn Diaries series...

Color-rating blue. I gave the third book an extra star because I especially loved the pixies. Great art work. These are easy readers for first and second graders.

#33 The Water Dancer

4.5 blue stars - Brilliant writing - just not quite a 5. The Underground Railroad with a magical realism twist.

Pages: 10967

#31 A Mighty Dawn

4 red stars - Not quite fantasy and not quite historical fiction. 8th century Scandinavia. Room to grow, so I'll read the sequel.

#32 A Bend in the Stars

Barely 4 stars - a red rating. Reads like a romance, but without the satisfaction of a romantic ending. I liked the overall plot and the characters, but the writing verged too much on melodrama from time to time.

Pages: 10564

#30 Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

4.5 purple stars (rounded up). An important story. Reads like a novel, but I wish it had been fleshed out a little more.

Pages: 9492

No takers, huh? Okay.

Here's what I've come up with. I think I'm pretty happy with this:

5 + stars = Gold (Gold medal, nothing higher. Well maybe Platinum but let's not go there....)
5 stars = Purple (Grand Champion ribbon)
4.5 = Blue (Blue ribbon, 1st prize)
4 stars = Red (2nd prize ribbon)
3.5 = Pink (tickled pink, in the pink, ...but not quite red?)
3 stars = Green (Green for Go, not outstanding, but I'd read more by this author - or not)
2.5 stars =Yellow (Caution)
2 stars = Orange (Hazard Warning, LOL!)
1 star = Black (Black-balled)
DNF (not rated) = Gray

I went back and added colors to all my books read this year. The stars don't "exactly" match up. I had a 4 star Purple book, and a couple of 3 star Yellow books.

Of my 29 books read so far, I have:
4 Gold
2 Purple
7 Blue
5 Red
5 Pink
4 Green
2 Yellow

Or, to break it down finer, I had:
5 star Gold - 4
5 star Purple - 1
4.5 star Purple - 1
4 star Blue - 7
3.5 (rounded up to 4) star Red - 5
3.5 star Pink - 5
3.5 star Green - 2
3 star Green - 2
3 star Yellow - 2

I've thought for some time that Goodreads should have half-stars, and I do add them to my reviews with a note that I've rounded it sometimes up, and sometimes down. I know some people use a scale from 1-10 or ABCDF or some other rating system.

Recently, in one of my groups, I saw someone using colored "bookworms" and I liked that idea of using colors. First I thought I'd stick with rainbow order, because it also fits with the traffic light connotation of stop, caution, and go. I rarely rate anything less than 3-stars though, so 1 and 2 stars would be red and orange, 3 stars would be yellow and green, 4 stars blue and purple, and then I would add silver and gold for 5 stars (also rare.) Not sure I like that, because yellow implies caution, and I think a 3-star book should be at least green. So do I split 2 stars into orange and yellow, and then add a violet or something under purple? The other problem with that, it that I think of horse racing, or county fair ribbons where purple is grand champion so that should be 5-stars. With county fair ribbons, red is usually 2nd place, and yellow is 3rd. Green actually come pretty far down after pink and white... What say you all? I want the colors to be fairly intuitive without too much explanation.

What if I did Gold and Purple for 5-star, Blue and Red for 4-star, Yellow and Green for 3-star (with Yellow being ABOVE green - or is that counter-intuitive with yellow being caution in the traffic-light sense...), 2 star would be orange, and then maybe black for a 1-star?

Help!

#29 The Winter of the Witch

Finally!!!! I was underwhelmed by this #3 in the trilogy, but I still give 5 stars to the trilogy. 3.5 rounded up to 4 Blue stars for this one.

Pages: 9,133

#28 How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America
4 Blue stars - Concise and easy to understand, just a tad oversimplified. I found it thought-provoking and depressing.

Still falling behind a bit with only three books read in July.

Still working on
READ The Winter of the Witch and hope to finish it soon.

My R is for Race book for A Good Yarn (July theme):
READ How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America
Will finish that this week.

Themes for August are S is for Summer, and S is for Scandinavia. My picks are:
The Summer Queen
READ A Mighty Dawn

August book for Daytimers is:
READ Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

Beyond that, I just hope to catch up on some of those unfinished things from previous months!

#26 Manhattan Beach
3 Yellow stars - Not quite sure what this book wanted to be. Definitely well researched, so I did feel I learned something new about a time and place. But it wasn't a story that drew me in.

#27 The Current
3 Pink stars - Beautiful, atmospheric writing, and lots of psychological depth to the characters, but very ambiguous ending that left me confused as to whether or not anything was resolved.

Just checked it out. Been on my want to read list forever.

Thanks, Leslie. I actually have been reading War and Peace this week and I'll read some tonight before bed.