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

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

I have just read "The Complete Maus" by Art Spiegelman. This is a compilation of two separate books that he wrote about how the Holocaust affected his father, a Polish Jew.

This also includes parts of Spiegelman's relationship with his father, as he drew and wrote it as he remembered their discussions of his father's memories to be.

I much prefer to read a more traditional book, but this book is an important testament to the victims of the Nazis.

"Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas" by Adam Kay. Kay was an OB/GYN registrar, so very nearly consultant, when he burnt out and left the medical profession. His first book was a best seller and has been made into a stage production (perhaps also is being filmed?). This is a tiny, very brief sequel to that, concerning working as a young, ethnically Jewish doctor over Christmas EVERY SINGLE YEAR, because the NHS is overstretched, he was young, he didn't have children, and because he is Jewish. It is quite funny, but it can also pack a sucker punch.

I am using a memoir for this, My Name is Why by Lemn Sissay. It includes poetry he has written himself.

OK, it turns out, I share a birthday with James Joyce, and he liked to do things on his birthday. His "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" was serialized in a newspaper, and the start date for that was 2 February 1914. Would this count? If not, "Ulysses" was first offered for sale on 2 February 1922, so that would be a possibility. I have to look at how long these are. I've never read any Joyce.

I read We of the Never Never by Aeneas Gunn and liked it. She wrote a few other books, iirc. They are set in the early 1900s.

Ha ha ha!

Thank you!

Well, I read everything that was asked of me at school, and everything that was suggested. So, for this one I chose a book my sister had to read in school, but I didn't. It is "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" by Robert C. O'Brien.

"Swallows and Amazons" by Arthur Ransome. It is a children's book first published in 1930. The four Walker children are allowed to go off in a small sailing boat on a lake and camp on a small, uninhabited island. Their boat is the Swallow, so they call themselves the Swallows. They encounter the Amazons in a similar boat. There are pirates, savages, natives, sharks, octopuses, etc. They have such vivid imaginations. Children today would never be given so much freedom, as it puts them at risk.

For this one, I have read "Renia's Diary" by Renia Spiegel. Renia was 14 in 1939 when she started this diary. She was a Jewish girl living in Poland. When Germany invaded Poland, her mother was stuck in Warsaw, while she and her little sister were with their grandparents in the part of Poland which was taken over by the Soviets. Years later, the Nazis also invaded that area, and so they were directly put through the Holocaust. Renia was murdered by the Nazis in 1942, but her boyfriend saved her little sister and her diary. Only now has her sister read the diary and decided to have it published. It is filled with all the things a teenage girl might go through, plus war and separation from parents. Renia was a very good poet, and much of her poetry is here.

This could also fit the prompts for a book in translation (from Polish) and one that features letter or journal entries.

"The Giver of Stars" by Jojo Moyes. It is a fictional story based on the real Packhorse Librarians of Appalachia.

Well, I'm going to stretch the meaning of the word "featuring". "The Woman In The Blue Cloak" by Deon Meyer has a PI who is a suspect in a mysterious murder.

"Big Cherry Holler" by Adriana Trigiani

I bought "Big Cherry Holler" by Adriana Trigiani for this. I know people who love her books, but this just didn't click for me. She describes things beautifully, so I read it in just two days. I didn't really care about any of the characters, though. Perhaps this is because it is the second book of a series, and I haven't read the first book.

"This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor" by Adam Kay. I've also been working on the letters of Vincent van Gogh, but that is a very long book in teeny weeny print.

The Friend by Dorothy Koonmson

"Fishermen, Randies and Fraudsters: Crime in the 19th Century Aberdeen and the North East" by Malcolm Archibald. There weren't an awful lot of fishermen in this book, but enough to satisfy me.

L.S. Lowry by Michael Leber and Judith Sandling
I saw they made a movie about Lowry, and in a promotional interview heard that he had used many different styles of painting and drawing, not just the "little people" many people know him for. So, I checked the library and borrowed this book. I think I can't draw at all, but while reading this, I have stopped and picked up a pen and tried a few sketches. I'm no artist, but I might try to do some more of this.

The Grilling Season by Diane Mott Davidson. The main character is a caterer who seems to regularly stumble across dead bodies and can't keep from investigating whodunit despite being married to a cop and knowing better. Pleasant enough, although not taxing.

The Grilling Season by Diane Mott Davidson. This belongs to a series about Goldy Schulz. She's a caterer who seems to regularly stumble across dead bodies and can't stop herself from investigating them. Her ex-husband is a violent man, and early one morning, Goldy stumbles upon his girlfriend's battered body. Despite being married to a cop, she starts investigating the murder after her teenage son piles on the pressure to "help" his dad. She does this around her catering commitments, the recipes for which are included in the book.