Anika’s Comments (group member since Dec 25, 2011)

Anika’s comments from the Reading with Style group.

Circular, using books that have been taking up space on my Kindle for *ages*/IRL book club books:

1. Sault Ste Marie: Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus
2. Winnipeg: Nikki Erlick, The Measure
3. Helena: Emilia Hart, Weyward
4. Denver: Robert Dugoni, The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell
5. Oklahoma City: Agatha Christie
6. Little Rock: Iain Reid, I'm Thinking of Ending Things
7. Saint Louis: Lisa Nikolidakis, No One Crosses the Wolf: A Memoir
8. Chicago: Annabel Chase, Hunter's Moon
9. Duluth: Lauren Thoman, I'll Stop the World
10. Sault Ste Marie: Emma Sloley, Disaster's Children

Post your completed tasks here. In order to help us better manage our score keeping: PLEASE ONLY POST ONE BOOK PER MESSAGE.

Please use the add book/author link for the book titles and include both title and author in your post.

If using an outside source to qualify a book for points, please be sure to post in the appropriate task thread prior to posting in this thread.

Sample Post

20.4 Othello

The Life of Charlotte Brontë by Elizabeth Gaskell

How it fits 20.4: Charlotte Bronte hid her identity by writing under the pen name of Currer Bell.
How it fits 20.9: Charlotte moved from England to Brussels, Belgium, where she taught in a school and gained inspiration for her first novel (unpublished at the time) The Professor, and her later novel Villette.

+20 Task
+ 5 Combo (20.9)
+10 Female
+10 Not a novel (biography)
+15 Oldies (pub'd 1857)
+ 5 Jumbo (587 pages)

Task total = 65
Season total = 285 (assumes mid-season with a previous total of 220)

Karen Michele wrote: "Thanks - I've got my route, but I might want to find a shorter book for my first city, Seattle, where right now I have Can You Forgive Her? @847 pages. Sometimes I get frustrated when..."

Oh, gosh! Yeah... I could see myself giving up at that point--plus, you def want Jumbo points for that one!

Karen Michele wrote: "Are we to read our books in order for this one?"

That is correct—you’re essentially building a train route. In order to get from, say, Los Angeles to Salt Lake City, you can’t just skip over Las Vegas…even though it’s on your “track” you’d have to read for LA, then LV, then SLC.

20.8 Morrison

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

I don't even know where to begin on this review...
This book made me laugh out loud, cringe, and straight up want to puke in equal measure.
It's so many things mashed into one that I don't even know how to start untangling how I feel about it.
It's cultural appropriation and racism and PC-culture and social media critique and a sharp look at the publishing industry and awful characters (not awfully written characters, but the characters themselves are all pretty reprehensible) with an unputdownable narrative and even though I'm sure I didn't entirely understand it, I (mostly) enjoyed the wild ride.
June and Athena are "friends"--though frenemies would be more accurate. They met in a writing course at university: Athena graduated with a book deal, June...was a dud.
They remained sort-of friends, like the kind of friends who get together for drinks once a month. Something life changing happens that night that sets off the stomach-churning events that follow.
This reminded me a little of You, where the narrator is disgusting but because they're the narrator you're kind of on their side(?).
I know none of this is a *glowing* review, but it really was good...

+20 Task
+10 Review

Task total: 30
Season total: 535

15.6 CoS

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

+15 Task, Young (b. 1983)

Task total: 15
Season total: 505

20.1 Author! Author!

The Wishing Game by Meg Shaffer

Yesterday when I logged into Goodreads, I saw that the Goodreads Choice Awards voting was open. I'm always curious to see what's up for the prize and at least a handful of the nominated books end up on my TBR. This immediately jumped out as I hadn't decided on a book for this task and it appeared to fit.
I *loved* it! It was a little bit Ready Player One (an eccentric millionaire creates a game to reward one exceptional player) and a whole lot of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (an eccentric genius invites a few lucky people into the world he was created to compete to become a part of that world).

Jack Masterson wrote the most popular series of kids' books ever--a series of over 30 books, all set on Clock Island which is overseen by the Mastermind. Jack lives on an island off the coast of Maine which he has turned into Clock Island. Over the years, many kids have dreamed of running away to Clock Island...Lucy is one of the few who actually made it.
As an adult, she is invited to return to the island to participate in a game that could change her life--a life that has not at all turned out the way she'd dreamed. The winner of the game gets the only copy of Masterson's as-yet unpublished final book (one he wrote after a years-long hiatus) to do with as they see fit.

It's not really a mystery, not exactly a romance, not precisely an adventure--though there are elements of each found here.
It's just...magical.

It's not a perfect book--the writing is just on the edge of being YA (though it's not classified as such) and there were definitely a few eye-roll-y moments, but overall I was there for it and was unabashedly swept up in the magical world Shaffer created.

+20 Task, whole thing revolves around the author and his creations
+10 Review

Task total: 30
Season total: 490

Winter 23/24 Bonuses

1. Half-way Finish (50 points): Complete all of the 10-point tasks OR all of the 20-point Reading with Style tasks.

2. Mega Finish (200 points): Complete all Reading with Style tasks and the 15-point tasks. (30 book minimum -- at least one book claimed for task points for each task. A book may only be claimed for task points once).

Other Rewards*:
1. Group Reads -- the Spring 2024 "group reads" books will be chosen by a combination of moderators, mega-finishers, and members that read at least 5 books and earn the highest percentage of Not a Novel points in the Winter 23/24 Challenge.

2. 10-point task creation -- the top three readers for the Winter 23/24 Challenge, as determined by overall points, will each get to create a 10-point task for the Spring 2024 Challenge.

3. 20-point task creation -- the "most strategic" reader, the member that, on average, earns the most points per book (with a 5 book minimum) will have the opportunity to create a 20-point task for the Spring 2024 Challenge. In calculating this number, we are taking into account the Task & Style points for the RwS tasks, and the Task, Bonus, and Completion points for the sub-challenge. The Halfway Finish(es) & the Mega-finish will not be included in the calculation, so that members who are unable to read more than 20 books in three months have an equal chance at being the "most strategic reader" as our fastest readers.

* although participants may be eligible for multiple rewards, only one will be granted per challenge.

* Participants that create tasks for three consecutive challenges are ineligible for a task-creation reward on the fourth. Instead, the member will be asked to submit a group read book. Eligibility is reinstated on the following challenge.

Winter 23/24 Styles

1. Combo (5 points): Read a book for one task that could have applied to another task as well. If a book applies to one other task, you will receive 5 style points. If it applies to two other tasks, you will receive 10 points...and so on.

2. Female (10 points): Read a book by a female author and reward yourself with 10 points.

3. Not-a-Novel (10 points): Explore new forms by reading short story collections, non-fiction, plays, and poetry collections.

4. Oldies (5 to 25 points): Put down the bestseller list and read something with a bit more mileage on it. Based on a book's original publication date, style points will be awarded according to the following scale:
-25 to 75 years old: 5 points (1949-1999)
-76 to 150 years old: 10 points (1874-1948)
-151 to 250 years old: 15 points (1774-1873)
-251 to 400 years old: 20 points (1624-1773)
-400+ years old: 25 points (1623 and older).

5. Jumbo (5 to 25 points): Receive extra points for reading big books according to the following scale:
500-699 Pages: 5 Points
700-799 Pages: 10 Points
800-899 Pages: 15 Points
900-999 Pages: 20 Points
1000+ Pages: 25 Points

If you'd like to share your Winter plan, this is the place!

10.7 Scrabble

The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman

+10 Task, 25 point scrabble total
+5 Multiple

Task total: 15
Season total: 460

Yay!!! Will update the spreadsheet now to reflect that. Well done, Val!

Post any general questions about the Winter challenge here.

10.8 Friends

Be Water, My Friend: The Teachings of Bruce Lee by Shannon Lee

+10 Task

Task total: 10
Season total: 445

20.3 Dickens

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

+20 Task, their lives overlapped from 1812-1859
+15 Oldies, pub. 1820

Task total: 35
Season total: 435

15.5 CoS

Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh

+15 Task, Non-Western Vietnamese author

Task total: 15
Season total: 400

15.4 CoS

The Goodbye Cat by Hiro Arikawa

+15 Task, LiT translated from Japanese

Task total: 15
Season total: 385

20.7 Christie

The Best Friend by Jessica Fellowes

This book follows the friendships of Bella and Kate from age six until they are in their 80s. Kate is gregarious and attention-seeking, popular and beautiful. Bella is more reserved, more sensible and sensitive. They are besties from the beginning. Of course, things happen throughout their lives and they'll go years without talking--then reconnect and they're instantly thick as thieves again.
Listening to this book was a little like watching an episode of Jerry Springer--a toxic, co-dependent, horrifying relationship on display for the world to see with no resolution and a whole lot of questions with no answers.
This is one of the worst books I've read in a while. None of the characters were sympathetic and while (I think?) you're meant to feel sympathetic towards Bella (Kate steals her boyfriend when she's 14, drops her entirely when she's 17, at 30 Kate gets Bella drunk and then leaves her alone with her predatory step-son--it's intimated that he rapes her--and then blames Bella for everything, and that's just the beginning of the awfulness of Kate), but Bella was a pretty useless character and I had no sympathy for her whatsoever.
I think the worst thing about this novel was the author's obfuscation--she's always dropping hints, intimating, hinting at things without every actually STATING anything...so often I wondered, "Did I miss something?" I'd re-listen to long passages to see if I missed a word or sentence that would make sense of everything and, nope, it was just a big muddle of nothing. Infuriating. An absolute waste of time. Ick.
I finished it weeks ago and was hoping that it'd grow on me in retrospect. Nope. Just got worse on reflection. One of its MPG genre is "Mystery" but the only mystery was how did I not DNF this horrible novel.

+20 Task, spans 70+ years
+10 Review

Task total: 30
Season total: 370

20.4 Golden Age

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

When I first saw this task at the end of August, I was a little bummed that I'd just finished The Illustrated Man since it would have worked perfectly here and I didn't have much interest in reading another "golden era" sci-fi book. How wrong I was! The Martian Chronicles was jaw-droppingly good.
As with Illustrated Man, this was a "fix-up" novel (one that takes previously published short stories and edits them to make them fit together as a "novel"). It still read as short stories to me, but stories where names and characters from other stories pop up to give it a sense of linear time and consistency.
I think my favorite thing about Bradbury is his ability to comment on the ills of the world/society/humanity/America in the world of a Martian future.
My favorites were "Usher II" (a criticism of censorship--and one where the main character kills off the censors using torture devices from Poe's stories), "There Will Come Soft Rains" (a fully automated house keeps a family's life running smoothly, though all that's left of the family are silhouettes of dust on the wall after nuclear annihilation), and "Way in the Middle of the Air" (the black population of a town is leaving en masse for Mars and John Teece, a local shop owner and bigot, is trying his best to make them stay...I got chills when one of his former employees, while heading for the rocket, asks him, "What will you do with your nights now?" Teece doesn't know what he means and when it dawns on him that he means there will be no one left for him to lynch, he flies into a rage and tries to get to the rockets to stop them but can't because all of the departing townsfolk left their belongings in the road to hinder anyone trying to stop them).

+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Oldies, pub. 1950

Task total: 35
Season total: 340

10.5 October

Later by Stephen King

Oops! I read this one a long time ago (j/k--just looked at my activity on the book and realized I read it last July...but I've read a couple of hundred books since then so it's fair that I don't remember every single bit of the book, right?!) and remember loving it and thinking it was atmospheric without being terrifying and a pretty tame King book. So I chose it for my IRL book club--my Aunties and Nieces book club...where some of said nieces are 13 :-/
So, yeah, it was a bit more than I think would be appropriate for a 13-year-old. I'm mortified--but everyone said they wanted to try a Stephen King book and this was the most tame one that came to mind. Gulp. Lots of "f" bombs, a reeeeallly bad scene with a dead naked drug lord, and a big icky reveal later and I feel like the worst Auntie on the planet.
For grown-ups though? I feel okay about the rec—though I did reduce my rating of it on reread. Wish I would have gone with Joyland instead.

+10 Task
+10 Review
+5 Prizeworthy

Task total: 25
Season total: 305