Cheryl’s Comments (group member since Jan 04, 2017)

Cheryl’s comments from the Challenges from Exploding Steamboats group.

Congratulations!

When I picked up Night Over the Solomons by Louis L'Amour, I was thinking it would be a quick read and fulfill the Prolific Author prompt for GenreLand. About halfway through it dawned on me that this had Night in the title.

I had not thought of HP as a refugee -- he and his grey matter are so superior. :)

It occurs to me that the main character of the book I just started is a war evacuee, which is similar -- but I will count that as an over 450, since I have fewer options for that prompt.

I will also include The Autobiography of Miss Jane PIttman by Lawrence J. Gaines. These three books together were my anti-racist repertoire for February and, while they were all heavy, they were all quite good reads.

I will add A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah to this list. A beautfiul but difficult to read testament to resilience and the need for a more peaceful world.

I really enjoyed See No Stranger by Valarie Kaur. It is a very thought-provoking book on how to contribute to an antiracist world.

Thanks -- I had not considered that India is not South EAST Asia, I was only thinking about it being in Asia. I probably have one or two that are set in Thailand (mysteries) and Laos or Cambodia, so I will dig those out instead.

His previous book was The Toad Who Loved Tea -- I think it is my favorite of his.

I popped in to see if you had given any further details on South East Asian. I am reading a book right now written by a Sikh woman of Indian heritage, but she was born in the US. So far (chapter 2) her Sikh and South East Asian heritage are important factors in the book. I think that whether I count the book for this prompt will depend on the overall importance of those factors to the rest of the book.

I have finished The Body Keeps the Score and highly recommend it.

See if you can find a collection of nature poems by a favorite poet - Frost had quite a few. Keats also. Even Dickinson. Otherwise, you might double up with the literary magazine prompt.

I read it one summer when I was working a job which required me to be a body only and I was otherwise bored at work. I will tell you that for me, the first 750 pages kind of dragged, but the last 250 or so were much better. I might not have finished it if there had not been a dare hanging over my head for 15 years by that point.

I will likely read many of these -- I don't usually even count them in my yearly challenge. But since I had a book written by a fellow BookCrosser that I wanted to be able to provide a review on, I will at least count the first one for the challenge: The Toad from Outer Space, by Faiz Kermani. He spoke at the Bordeaux Conention and was very popular and fun to hang out with.

Found this on my shelf and it was delightful and quick
Aunt Dimity and the Family Tree

Finished The Five. Excellent book.

Query -- does this apply to Victorian era (time period) or Victorian England/Great Britiain/British Empire?
In particular, I notice that the time period encompasses the US Civil War and I once had (I think) a collection of letters related to this event. Don't think I do any more, but my shelves are double and triple stacked.

I have always pondered the proper placement of Great Britain on these things -- not least because the first time I counted it as part of Europe, I was reproved by a Brit. And now, with Brexit complete, I am even more uncertain.

The friend who gifted it to me for Christmas said that with my legal and pscyh background and the number of books I read, she thought I should keep up with the controversial literature of the times. It is only on those grounds that I have considered it.

The more I talk to my friend, the more I want to read it. The fact that it fulfills a prompt moves it up the TBR stack.

This one confused me -- I wasn't sure if it meant 6/7 books total, one on each continent, or one book that covers every continent.