Alysa’s Comments (group member since Jun 27, 2015)

Alysa’s comments from the Nothing But Reading Challenges group.

@Mel - aha, that's great!

Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham

The definitive, dramatic, minute-by-minute story of the Challenger disaster based on new archival research and in-depth reporting.

On January 28, 1986, just seventy-three seconds into flight, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all seven people on board. Millions of Americans witnessed the tragic deaths of a crew including New Hampshire schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. Like 9/11 or JFK’s assassination, the Challenger disaster is a defining moment in 20th-century history—yet the details of what took place that day, and why, have largely been forgotten. Until now.

Based on extensive archival records and meticulous, original reporting, Challenger follows a handful of central protagonists—including each of the seven members of the doomed crew—through the years leading up to the accident, a detailed account of the tragedy itself, and into the investigation that followed. It’s a tale of optimism and promise undermined by political cynicism and cost-cutting in the interests of burnishing national prestige; of hubris and heroism; and of an investigation driven by leakers and whistleblowers determined to bring the truth to light. Throughout, there are the ominous warning signs of a tragedy to come, recognized but then ignored, and ultimately kept from the public.

Higginbotham reveals the history of the shuttle program, the lives of men and women whose stories have been overshadowed by the disaster as well as the designers, engineers, and test pilots who struggled against the odds to get the first shuttle into space.

Little, Big by John Crowley

John Crowley's masterful Little, Big is the epic story of Smoky Barnable, an anonymous young man who travels by foot from the City to a place called Edgewood—not found on any map—to marry Daily Alice Drinkwater, as was prophesied. It is the story of four generations of a singular family, living in a house that is many houses on the magical border of an otherworld. It is a story of fantastic love and heartrending loss; of impossible things and unshakable destinies; and of the great Tale that envelops us all. It is a wonder.

Reason: One of the books that's been on my TBR the longest (about 13 years!)

Is this orange enough?

Hah, perfect timing -- I just refreshed to see if this was up!

I'm good with my day, thank you!

DQs Day 8 : 86% ("Vicky liked that summer at the hospital,..." - END.

36. Gaspar has endured a lot by the end of this novel. How did you read this ending, hopeful, devastating, ironic, or something else entirely?

I found the ending suitably complicated, and grim. It felt to me like Gaspar could move on now and have a good life if he wanted to, and perhaps with more help for his mental health, but that he won't actually do that. Instead it seems like he will just wallow in misery. However, this is just my interpretation of something that could be more open-ended, and inspire a different interpretation in other readers, so I guess in that sense there is some hope. That also tracks with the historical and political allegories: wallowing vs hope, depending on one's outlook.

37. How did your understanding of the “legacy” passed down through the Order change in the final chapters? Did the ending shift your sympathy toward or away from any particular character?

I don't know if there's any real "legacy" per se: I was particularly struck by the advanced age of most of the Order members who followed Gaspar. Enriquez explicitly draws attention to their decrepitude, with Florence (I think) mentioning that she was running out of time to get a new body, and with them all being slow as they walk in the Other Place. I thought this was, in part, a way to imply the fading away of a "legacy" at least as far as Florence's branch of any Order is concerned, besides Gaspar's personal legacy of sadness. That said, there are other sort of "splinter" groups who know about the Darkness, and of course the Rich and Powerful continuing to run the world in any case, so who knows.
As far as sympathy for any characters goes, I thought that at one earlier point, Florence had - at least a little bit - turned away from her most extreme extremism, after what happened with Eddie and after seeing good results from treating the next Medium (Juan) relatively well, but by the end she had swung back the other way and was just as depraved again. But she was always a Bad Guy, either way. Just a slightly more or less sympathetic one at different points in the story.

38. This novel blends supernatural horror with political violence. Do you think this was done well, or does the horror distract from the political commentary?

I think that was excellently done!

39. Did the ending feel satisfying to you? Are there any parts that you wish had been explained more clearly?

It was pretty satisfying. I think explaining anything further would have cheapened it a little bit. We were ultimately told quite a lot, with all the pieces fitting together in the end, and I don't need to be spoonfed clear answers with this type of literary fiction.

I started Autobiography by Morrissey, and it's so entertainingly pretentious -- like, so bad it's good. From what my partner said about it, and other reviews I've read, it gets worse in a bad way, but we'll see. So far it's like a guilty pleasure.

Yikes indeed, Elisabeth! At least you have some levity to break up the slow book.

I started The Last Murder at the End of the World today, and so far I am not impressed but hopefully it will get better.

I don’t think I will get much reading done before Friday… because Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans who celebrate it!
I will be busy doing family stuff, and we’ll all eat ourselves into a great big food coma.

DQs Day 7 : 75% ("Back in Buenos Aires, I wrote up my article..." - 86% ("He felt he had denounced his father.")

31. Enriquez leads off the section titled “Black flowers growing in the sky,” with a quote from Emily Dickinson: “One need not be a Chamber—to be haunted.” What do you think this quote means? How does it relate to the novel?

I really like that quote (which was short, so I read it closely LOL). I think in Dickinson's time a haunting was more associated with a place, but the poet was pointing out that a person too could be haunted and bring it with them wherever they go. That relates to several characters but of course especially Juan and Gaspar, who are haunted both literally and figuratively.

32. How did you feel about Gasper’s choices. Did you understand why he acted the way he did? Did it change how you see him?

Frankly he seems like a normal young adult who happens to be dealing with a huge amount of trauma, a lot of which is unknown to him but still a feeling he can't escape.

33. If you could ask any character from this section what they were thinking, who would it be and what would you want to know

There would be a lot, but the thing that comes to mind first is that I'd want to understand why Gaspar chose that specific moment, out of all the possible moments, to tell Luis that it was Juan who injured his arm.

34. We are getting close to the end. What are you hoping will happen next — and is there anything you’re worried about for the characters?

I finished the book already but at this point I was worried about if and how Betty's drunken confessions to the reporter Olga would eventually come up and bite somebody in the ass.

35. Enríquez has mentioned in interviews that one of her major Gothic influences for this novel was Wuthering Heights. How do you see elements of that novel echoed and revised in this one? Why do you think she might have selected Wuthering Heights as a reference?

Interesting. I've never been a huge Wuthering Heights fan but I happened to be reading some stuff about it (and other Bronte books) recently so it's fresh in my mind. They're so different, but both books deal with generational trauma, and with having choices taken away from you by those with more power and money, and the desire for power and money taking over people's lives.

Volunteering to write DQs! Team TAC

For the purposes of the Mini, do singers who don't play an instrument count as musicians?
I think so but just checking.
If so, I will read Autobiography by Morrissey

DQs Day 6 : 61% ("Stephen sat down on the bed..." - 75% ("...didn't go back to Zanartu or the pit")

26. Just backtracking for a moment, I'm really intrigued about Adela disappearing in the "haunted house" What do you really think happened to her arm and will this event play into what happens later in the story?

It seems clear that the Darkness took Adela's arm though at the point of her abduction the reader still doesn't know the exact circumstances of that. I didn't realize (or somehow missed) until the subsequent Rosario POV section that Adela and Gaspar were 2nd cousins -- but the children don't seem to know that either. That might have something to do with why the "haunted house" (aka the Other Place, as we'll come to understand) wanted her, because they share blood, but I suspect it may never be entirely spelled out.

27. We're half way through, are you enjoying the novel? Learning anything about an awful time in history? Did you know much about the situation in Argentina at this time? Are you finding it a fascinating insight into a chilling political era, a creepy horror novel or a combination of both? How do the two genres/themes/storylines interact to enhance your understanding of what actually happened?

It's a great book that I've appreciated more and more as we've progressed through it and all the different pieces have started to fit together. Hopefully I'll still think that once I've finished. It's a combination of both things this DQ describes, and also a commentary on how the specific situation in Argentina and in politics reflects the history of power and oppression and occultism more broadly. Like, there's tons of specificity here, but also a little bit of "the more things change, the more they stay the same" that is just as important IMO. That said, I'm definitely learning more about Argentine history, and apparently literary horror fiction was a great way to make me do that.

28. The author paints a depressing visceral picture of The Other Place. I also note this section involves a lot of hallucinogenic drugs which seemed to be a big part of the swinging 60's! So to my way thinking much of what is depicted on the page is portrayed as a drug trip to emphasise the horror of what really is going on? What do you think.. am I way off or on the right track?

That's a valid interpretation but to me it didn't seem like the depiction of the Other Place was like a drug trip so much as it was being juxtaposed with the drug trips that Rosario talks about as being a big part of the social group's daily life at the time. The Other Place was real whereas drug-induced hallucinations were understood to be figments of the mind, and because these folks had so much experience with the latter they were more able to recognize and respect the former. And it's the grounded realness of the Other Place that makes it so horrible.

29. And what about the character of Eddie? Do you think his descent into madness and death is an important part of the plot going forward?

Eddie was fascinating and tragic. At one point someone says that Eddie wasn't as insane as people made him out to be, and that seemed to be borne out by his behavior. Not insane; there was a cold logic to everything he did. I don't know if he'll still be important going forward now that he's supposedly dead, but it's possible: I did wonder for a moment if he's not actually dead and is somehow roaming the Other Place and had something to do with Adela's disappearance, but it's highly unlikely.

30. And now we move into Section 5 and a complete change of pace! How do you react to the clinical explanations of the killing, death and destruction after the largely supernatural explanations for what has been happening? (And are provided with the truth about Adela) How is the author using the supernatural/horror themes of the book to shine a light on the political situation in Argentina at this time?

I was not consciously expecting a section written by an as-yet-unmet-and-uninvolved reporter, years later, but I wasn't surprised by it either and it was a welcome change of pace. It made sense that what started out as coverage of the discovery of a site related to political violence followed all the right beats (the mass grave discovery, the historical reality, the way the victims' surviving family members are treated by the authorities, the shadow of the rich and powerful…) only took a turn into the supernatural when Betty got drunk and told the reporter a bunch of details and secrets. Perhaps there will be repercussions.

Thanks Mel!

DQs Day 5 : 49% ("He was sitting on the front stoop...") - 61% ("Just then, that was all I needed to hear.")

21. Did you grow up with a haunted house in your neighborhood? Did you dare knock on the door, or go inside if it was unoccupied? Did you see strange body parts and see ghosts and lose your senses like the kids did?

No haunted house in my neighborhood, but there was this one weird thing that happened. At the other end of the block from my childhood home there was a house right up against a small wooded area. One evening when I was about 12, I was out walking our dog around the whole block when it suddenly occurred to me that there used to be another old house next to it, where now there were only trees, and I was confused as to why that old house was suddenly just not there anymore. I still have a distinct memory of its facade, just a little bit dilapidated, lit at night by a lamp next to the door. It's hard to explain. It's like two realities superimposed upon one another: there was a house in that spot and a house never existed in the spot. I asked my mother and she said that no house ever existed in that spot. So I figure I just had an overactive imagination as a kid, or the house was only there in a dream, or I'm somehow confusing that spot with some other place. But I do still wonder because it still creeps me out a little. Memory is weird, true, but it's a very vivid one.

22. Did you expect Juan to actually succumb to his illness? How do you think Gaspar is going to deal with this?

Well he had to die eventually, and it's kind of a wonder that he made it so long under so much strain. Gaspar will be angry and miserable for a while but eventually get over it, insofar as anyone ever gets over the death of a parent at a young age.

23. We are given a new POV, and a jump back in time. What do you think of Rosario?

I really like young Rosario. She seems to be pretty clear-eyed about life, about her childhood fancies, about other people, about her place in the world. Hah, "clear-eyed" is a funny thing to say about someone who seems to have spent a whole bunch of this section on psychedelics and other recreational drugs, but hey it was the late '60s!

24. What do you think about the relationship between Juan and Rosalia so far?

I don't like that their relationship initially formed due to childhood trauma-bonding, but towards the end of the section, when they reunite after Rosario (three years Juan's senior) made the healthy decision to go live life elsewhere to kind of figure out who she could be without him, I thought it was nice. This section offers background that enriches the earlier parts of the book, and helps explain Juan's obsession with helping Rosario's trapped spirit, or whatever the F was happening in that plotline. It seems like they really did love each other.

25. We get some more history of The Order, and a glimpse into how they try to get their power. What do you think of Mercedes' actions with her daughter and those children?

It was nice to get more history and insight into the motivations of the Order, and it was all more or less what I expected. The comparison of the Order to the wide interest in the occult in the 1960s was quite interesting, as was the fact that Rosario and Stephen and the others are actively aware that the Order is a sort of cult, but that they still need to keep it secret from, like, the run-of-the-mill hippies, etc.
Mercedes is the most blackly evil character in a book otherwise more interested in complex shades of gray. I think this has been the case from the beginning. Forcing Rosario to feed the "caged ones" (even the matter-of-fact Rosario uses language as an abstraction here) is just another example of how particularly terrible Mercedes' methods are for attaining power and domination. Just being evil on purpose, for its own sake.

I won't! But at least I know that if I decide not to read it, I've got musician books instead 😁

I finished my last book for Round 3.
Started 2 new books for Round 4, but I might DNF one of them (Meru) because I am not really into it. I will have to read more before I decide. 🤷‍♀️

Jenny wrote: "Pink Floyd's The Wall in bluegrass"

😱

I think that might be wrong on even more levels than Juan.

I can probably read a musician biography/memoir during the 2nd week of Round 4 but I don't want to commit yet -- not until I see how my reading goes during the 1st week, what with family stuff and school being closed for Thanksgiving here in the U.S.

Books about musicians also tend to have at least a few instrument and/or genre names in the text too, so if I do read something and a lot of the slots are filled, it could be possible to move stuff around a little :)


@ Elisabeth - IDK but for me it would probably the 5 different locations, so I would use it for New Orleans.

DQs Day 4 : 37% ("Hugo Periano managed to finish the pool...") - 49% ("...he wanted to sleep for years.")

16. Gaspar looks through his Mom's music collection in the beginning of this section. I've never read a book where the characters say "I don't like music that much." Just like Gaspar, I wondered "Is that weird?" Do you find it strange when people do not care for music? Do you find you lean towards books/ movies or music more?

I go through phases where I spend more time with music, books, or movies, but I love them all. When I was a teenager music was my LIFE, and then that total focus fell away as I got older and discovered other things and my horizons expanded. I used to find it strange when people were dispassionate about music, even music they like -- I remember asking an older cousin about this when I was maybe 15 or thereabouts, and being quite shocked when they answered something like "Oh, I don't really care that much, I just listen to whatever's playing on Top 40 Radio" and I just could not fathom that. Total incredulity. But now I get it. I can't relate all that much, but I understand, and I'm not so judgy about it.

17. Entering the order is becoming more and more disturbing. What questions does this part of the novel raise about personal agency in the face of supernatural or systematic power?

I like how you worded this because this book definitely raises more questions than it answers. Like, why is almost every adult who isn't an Order member (that we know or suspect) at least knows something about its existence but seem ambivalent at best and complicit at worst? It is like "If you can't beat them, join them" or "Just keep your head down"? It adds to the pervading sense of wrongness and dread that permeates the book, but is otherwise inexplicable at times, depending on which characters we're dealing with.
As for the characters who are actual members, I think they have varying levels of personal agency, for both their good and bad acts, depending on the character and the situation. Like, some use their agency to protect Gaspar, which others use their agency to actively harm others. Difficult to know how much the latter people would actually acknowledge that this is personal agency and not simply claim to be doing as the Order, or the capital-D Darkness, would have them do.

18. What do you think about Gaspar and Juan's relationship at this point in the book? What part of their relationship stems from the conflict with the Order and what part seems more of a father / son relationship?

I'm not sure that can be parsed, so tied up are their lives with the Order. But since that's unbeknownst to Gaspar I'll venture to say that as far as his perspective is concerned it must seem like just a very extreme version of father/son dynamics. A lot of books are based on extreme versions of parent/child dynamics (because less extreme ones are boring I guess?!), but here it is taken to horrific heights.

19. I am loving all of the sensory details in this book. Do you find that these details move the plot along? Or add to the tension at all?

For me it adds to the tension and doesn't slow the plot. Just puts me more inside the story. Love it.

20. What do you think will be a resolution between the medical, spiritual and supernatural world in this book? Have you read any other books by South American authors that also wrestle with these seemingly different worlds?

I doubt there will be any firm resolution in this book. Perhaps it will hint at the need, but impossibility, of keeping these things separate, but IDK.
I haven't widely read South American authors, but I find they do tend to lean, on the whole, towards wrestling with these elements in fiction via magical realism. I personally am not that drawn to magical realism, though I understand why it's such a prevalent literary tendency. Some of its hallmarks are used in the Horror genre too, and there's arguably magical realism apparent in this book, but we're only halfway through so we'll see where we land in the end.

Melindam wrote: "OH-KAY, people, I don't know what has just happened, but need to do something to restore the tracking."

Weird! It was fine a few min ago. Good luck restoring!