Mary’s Comments (group member since Jan 06, 2017)

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

Stina wrote: "Well, the Goodreads PTBs have seen fit to delete all but a handful of the threads I posted for individual prompts. They've been deleting a bunch of stuff randomly in other groups, too. Or maybe the..."

That's so weird!

So, embarassingly, I'm only now making any kind of start. Here's my progress:
- A nonfiction book related to the word "border": "Beyond the Wall" by Katja Hoyer. It is a book about how East Germany came to be, and then followed the development of the country until its demise. It could conceivably also count as a book by an East European author as Hoyer was born in East Germany, but was just four when the wall fell.
- A book featuring a parallel reality: "Once Upon a River" by Diane Setterfield. The author begins by saying it is an alternative reality. She also quite charming at the end of the book tells the reader it is time they returned to their own.
- A book with a scripted font for the title: "The Thursday Murder Club" by Ricard Osman
- A book by an Eastern European author "Atoms and Ashes" by Serhii Plokhy. It could also be counted towards a book about history and a book relating to "secret". It is about six major nuclear accidents, and save Fukushima, there was quite an attempt to keep a lot of secrets about each of these accidents. The Kyshtym accident in the Soviet Union was successfully kept a secret for 30 years!
- A 5-star prediction "The Book of Lost Names" by Kristin Harmel This was praised by several people in a group I'm in, so I decided to read it. I expected it to be great, since so many people enjoyed it. I hadn't read anything by Harmel before, but it seems she's written several best sellers. This novel is set in WWII France and is about the forgers who helped many escape the Nazis, although there are a couple of chapters set in 2005.

When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father's War and What Remains by Ariana Neumann

I recommend this book. I liked the author's writing style. It was also quite different from anything else I've read about WWII and the Holocaust.

For one of these, I'm having "Bitch: A revolutionary guide to sex, evolution & the female animal" by Lucy Cooke. I really recommend this book.

So, I read "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by James Joyce. Joyce and I have the same birthday, and he insisted his books be first published on his birthday. "Hooray!" I thought. "Ugh!" I now think. I will not be rushing to read any more of his books.

I had a look. I haven't read ANY winners of this prize, although I recently saw and interview with Adichie, the author of "Half a Yellow Moon", and I might read that book anyhow.

Wouldn't a third, fourth, etc. book of a series also be a sequel?

I think, it would vary greatly wherever you live, too.

Thank you, Stina! I hope to do 24 books again this year.

Here goes!

- A book published on your birthday (any year): "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by James Joyce
- Free Space! Pick any book. "Bitch: A revolutionary guide to sex, evolution, & the female animal" by Lucy Cooke
- Bestselling memoir: "When Time Stopped: A Memoir of My Father's War and What Remains" by Ariana Neumann

I completed this one in December. I read a book about Cuba cuisine.

I read a lovely book by young Jack Berry called "Flying High in the Sunlit Silence: Aviation Art by Jack Berry". The pages are not numbered, by Amazon (who printed the book) tell me that there are 91 pages.

I read "Eat Cuban" by Andy Rose and Judy Bastyra. It was OK, but I was actually a bit disappointed. I was expecting more in every way, but it is a rather small book. It actually tends to almost be a picture book and cookbook rolled into one, with very little information on Cuba itself. What is there is rather gushing and non-critical.

Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen. Some of the story is set in California, Arizona and Indiana, even New York gets a couple of mentions, but in passing. However, the vast majority of the book is set in Illinois. Oh, there is also an extremely tiny bit in New Orleans and just a bit more in Peru.

I'm going to count Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen towards this. It isn't strictly just set in winter, but a lot of it is, even if that is in different years. A lot of it is around Christmas 1971.

"A Woman in Berlin" by an anonymous woman, but quite likely to have been Marta Hillers. The author was 34 years old living in Berlin when the Soviets arrived at the end of WWII. She started a journal a few days before, and continued it into the summer. It was first published in translation in the US in 1954. Five years later, it was published in German in Switzerland, and caused a furore in Germany. Nobody was prepared to face the truth of how many German women were raped by the Soviets in Berlin, how the men who were present turned away in order to save their own lives, how many women sought out one Soviet as a partner to survive and try to prevent being raped and/or gang raped by other Soviet soldiers. The author then decided to not allow the book to be reprinted while she was alive, although the country was ready to examine this topic by the 1970s. She died in 2001, so a new German version was published in 2003 and was accepted. Indeed, it was even turned into a film.

I also read The Five by Hallie Rubenhold. It is about the five women the police determined were victims of Jack the Ripper. Their lives are explained, but also social history is explained. The police were quite happy to describe all five women as prostitutes and therefore unworthy. This was very lazy on their part, but women who were not living a traditional, married life were often considered fallen in Victorian society and equated with prostitutes. Only one of these, the last one, had actively pursued a career in the sex trade, but I have to wonder if someone she crossed didn't catch up with her and silence her. She was murdered in her home, not on the streets like the other four. Also, she was much younger than the other four. This is not explored in the book.

I just read "The Corrections" by Jonathan Franzen. I spent most of the book enjoying the writing, but hating almost all the characters. There was a bit of redemption (correction?) near the end, or was that just because I was nearing the end?

I might read "Behind the Scenes at the Museum" by Kate Atkinson for this if I can get it from the library.

I read "The Riverwoman's Dragon" by Candace Robb.

I have "Sentient: What Animals Reveal About Our Senses" by Jackie Higgins. There are a number of animals on this cover: spiders, cheetahs, owls. There are also moles. So, although when I think of moles, I don't automatically think of summer, moles are noticeable in summer and not other times of the year. Do they hibernate??? OK, it is a stretch, but there you go.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. If you are curious about our senses and how our bodies work, this could be very helpful in giving you some insights.