Jennifer’s Comments (group member since Dec 03, 2021)

Jennifer’s comments from the On The Same Page group.

Eileen wrote: "I finished 4 stars. I love books about strong women of age"

That's about the third strong recommend I've seen in the last week... (moves the book up on the list...).

Denise, sorry for the delay -- I'm not getting the emails....sigh. I hope you feel better but in the meantime read -- I've liked several of her books.

My three:

Denise wrote: "Also, I think I just picked Lies, Lies, Lies for you in the Chip Away challenge!!

You did, and I read Lies, Lies, Lies pretty early in the month and very much liked it. I finished Laws of Medicine as well. I still have Bullet, the Lee Child, and Our Husband left.

LOL Kristine! This year my goal is to finish my annual challenges no later than the end of November, and then in December read whatever the heck I want!

Nice review, Denise - I read Optimist and liked it as well, although I think my favorite of hers so far was probably The Coincidence of Coconut Cake. That being said I also liked The Kindred Spirits Supper Club and The Simplicity of Cider.

I read this not long after Year of Magical, and during a year when two of my best friends died, so I got a lot out of it but I think that's partly because I needed what it had to offer.

Wow, Joy, whipping right through!

Lance wrote: "Finished #1 for January, Earnhardt Nation: The Full-Throttle Saga of NASCAR's First Family and..."

You're already in trouble with me today, young man. Putting five stars on books I think I might be interested in when you KNOW my TBR is vulnerable. THE NERVE.

Same here. There are some classics authors I really like and will read all day long -- Anthony Trollope, Galsworthy, Jane Austen, Somerset Maugham, Edith Wharton, Fitzgerald, Dumas (pere or fils, either one), Wodehouse (and I could name a bunch more), others I like in smaller doses (Henry James, Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoi, Thomas Wolfe) and some I just can't stand (the stream of consciousness crowd (you can add most of Faulkner to that list) and Ernest Hemingway come to mind, and I don't much like Kerouac and a few others that would likely get me pilloried on here...).

I think the conflict is the label -- classics. Classics are supposed to have "stood the test of time" and "be worthy of reading." What they really are in another sense are "books that happen to still be in print," and while their author may have had a big effect on literature (Truman Capote) or life (Harriett Beecher Stowe or Upton Sinclair) at the time they wrote, now they're just books. And as just books, some we will like, and some we won't -- just like every other book we pick up.

I have a hard time with stream of consciousness writing, Desley. That author and some of Virginia Woolf and most of James Joyce give me trouble (i.e I didn't finish them the first time and have no desire to go back).

Ironically, if I had to choose an all-time favorite author it would probably be John Galsworthy, who, when he was young (and obviously well before he won the Nobel Prize for literature), was roommates or shipmates or something with Joseph Conrad and they became good friends. So my favorite author and one I simply cannot read lived together and knew each other well.

Stephanie Plum has me laughing out loud and waking the neighbors. Just. Sayin.

Oh, that's great to know, Denise -- thank you! I just listened to The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder today -- frightening!

Nice approach, Michelle!

The one thing I decided to change about my reading this year was to try to get all my annual challenges that start this month done before 11/30. Every year December is a rush of reading books I'm sick of looking at. This year I'd like December to be me getting to read any darn thing I please!

I've finished three: and all were good reads.

Denise, I'm choosing for you!

My next three:

GRRRR the same thing happened to me! I'm like, you yammered on for 492 pages, would another 8 have killed you? LOL. Looking forward to seeing what you read!

The deadline for signup and the lists being locked for this challenge was midnight on Dec 31. But if you can get your books listed and locked, you can stay in this challenge -- looking toward to seeing your list!

LOL Lance, that sounds like personal growth to me!

Group read for January 2023

The author of award-winning Hamnet brings the world of Renaissance Italy to jewel-bright life in this unforgettable fictional portrait of the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de’ Medici as she makes her way in a troubled court.

Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf.

Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must now enter an unfamiliar court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her new husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate he appeared to be before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble?

As Lucrezia sits in constricting finery for a painting intended to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the court’s eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferranese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, the new duchess’s future hangs entirely in the balance.

Full of the beauty and emotion with which she illuminated the Shakespearean canvas of Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell turns her talents to Renaissance Italy in an extraordinary portrait of a resilient young woman’s battle for her very survival.

The Marriage Portrait
Maggie O'Farrell

Group read for January 2023

In this exhilarating novel by the best-selling author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry two friends--often in love, but never lovers--come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Gabrielle Zevin

I finished my last today too, Lance.... just under the wire. I had four winners and one "meh" this month. Glad for the new year and new annual challenges -- by the end of the year I'm so sick of the titles that have been staring at me for 11 months it's a relief to get them out of the way and clear the decks!