Anika’s
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(group member since Dec 25, 2011)
Anika’s
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from the Reading with Style group.
Showing 761-780 of 2,796
15.2 EotP ReduxThe Girls by Emma Cline
+15, Shirley Jackson Award for Novel 2016
Task total: 15
Season total: 675
10.5 Autumn ColorsThe House at Midnight by Lucie Whitehouse
I kept seeing reviews that compared this to The Secret History and Rebecca...and I want to punch all of those people who made those comparisons. No. Just: no.
There's a big manor house in the countryside and the author can't decide whether or not this house is haunted or exerting an evil influence over the people staying there or if it's just a big old house--sometimes we are told outright that the house is doing this...but just because you say it without *showing* us the truth of it doesn't make it so. Author fail.
There's a group of friends who gather at this house (which one of them has inherited) for good and not-so-good times (I guess that's where people are getting the Secret History vibes?), but these people are pretty awful and I don't really care what happens to any of them.
This was a huge disappointment...it started out with such promise! The first 10% was setting up the possibility for an intriguing story. Too bad the last 90% was such a let-down.
Could be that I've been glutting myself on so many truly delicious atmospheric stories that this one, by comparison, was such an epic fail.
+10 Task (MIDNIGHT blue)
+10 Review
+20 Combo: 20.2, 20.8 ("There was asparagus soup to start."), 20.9, 20.10 (pub. 2008)
Task total: 40
Season total: 650
20.1 JemisinI Have the Right to Destroy Myself by Kim Young-ha
I was drawn in by the title. I saw it on the "Most Poetic Book Titles" list and was instantly intrigued. Damn me for falling for a shiny new title. This book was SO not my jam. It had gross things just for the sake of gross things (not to help us better understand a concept or a character's motivations...it was just...ick...and I can never look at bottled water the same again).
A nameless character seeks out people (well, women) and grooms them into wanting to commit suicide which he offers to help them accomplish.
Every character is dismal, disconnected, and cold. I'm trying to think of *something* good I can say about the book (it is, after all, from an author "has won every major Korean literature award"), but I did not find one redeeming quality.
It was a short book but it took all of my willpower to finally finish it. SO glad to have that behind me. Now I need a shower.
+20 Task (all characters are Korean)
+10 LiT
+10 Review
+25 Combo: 10.3, 20.2, 20.6 (#101 on the list), 20.9, 20.10 (first pub. 1995)
Task total: 65
Season total: 610
10.9 NFLThe Invited by Jennifer McMahon
Helen and Nate have come into a little money and decided to leave city life for a bucolic life in Vermont. They find their dream tract of land--44 acres, right in their price range, with the perfect spot for them to build their dream home. Nate was a science teacher and loves the local flora and fauna while Helen, a former history teacher, is entranced by the story of the land they now call home: in the early 1920s a woman was hanged as a witch, her house burnt to the ground, and her daughter disappeared.
In this one, we get TWO houses-as-characters...one being built using the relics of a cursed family, one in a constant state of being torn down and rebuilt. Each exerts a different energy on the other characters in the story.
This was another perfect-for-the-season read with a pleasantly high creep-factor. The story bounces between past and present seamlessly, the ghost/witch story was on point, and the end was...mostly okay, even if it was a little eye-roll-y. Best listened to on an overcast fall day.
+10 Task, set 100% in New England (Vermont)
+10 Review
+20 Combo: 10.2 (born in U.S.), 10.3, 10.8, 20.9
Task total: 40
Season total: 545
20.7 CervantesMarina by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (850 Lexile)
'Tis the season for the creepy books and this one delivered in spades. Though set on the cusp of the 1980s in Barcelona, you'd never guess it if it wasn't plainly stated by the author. It is a gothic tale, best told around candlelight at dusk on a stormy night. At first glance, it seems a bit like a paean to Frankenstien (the fact that there is a character "Maria Shelley" leaves no doubts about this) but as the story progresses it definitely goes above and beyond a mere encomium. It's a little bit Rebecca, a touch of The Phantom of the Opera, and yet remains entirely itself. The creep factor is high, the mystery unfolds at a steady rate, and the emotional punch at the end may have elicited a few tears.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+20 Combo: 20.5, 20.8 ("We ate our soup without speaking."), 20.9, 20.10 (pub. 1999)
Task total: 50
Season total: 505
20.5 FaulknerThe Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl
I'm not the hugest Foo fan, but a friend gave us their extra tickets for the Foo Fighters show in LA last week and I wanted to read this before the show. Luckily, I found it on audiobook with just enough time to finish it before heading to LA.
Read by the author, it was a whirlwind story of a crazy career, a lifelong devotion to Music, and a surprisingly sensitive rock star.
Some of my favorite stories were of his first live performance in front of an audience while still a teenager (at the behest of his mother/best friend, "for [her] birthday"); the story of the haunted house he lived in; and a crazy performance where he broke his leg and dislocated his foot during the second song of the concert, running around the stage...but the show must go on, so the doctor put his foot back into joint, they got Dave a chair, and the rest of the show was played with the doctor sitting on the stage holding his leg/foot to keep it stable (after the show, they rushed him to the hospital where he required emergency surgery). Talk about a bad ass. I was also a little shocked to realize that after Nirvana's meteoric rise to fame, Dave still lived in a dump, sleeping on a mattress on the floor...they went from zero to famous so fast, he never had time to look for a different place.
This is a who's who of the music biz as well: stories with Paul McCartney, Joan Jett, Neil Young, and so many more I lose track.
I particularly loved the stories where he's just a dad, talking about his love for his girls...though he's a dad who flies from Australia to LA for the Daddy/Daughter dance and flies right back to Australia the same night so as not to miss any dates on the tour, so pretty much a Superdad.
+20 Task, link in thread
+10 Review
+15 Combo: 10.2 (born in Ohio), 10.9 (D.C., L.A., NYC, and Seattle=75% of the story), 20.9
Task total: 45
Season total: 455
10.7 GeocachingThe Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
Amor Towles is in my top five favorite authors of all time. Why I put this off...well, the cover didn't speak to me (such a superficial reason) and he puts books out so infrequently, I wanted to delay reading it so it didn't feel quite such a long time until his next book is announced (a slightly less superficial reason).
As I knew I would be, I'm kicking myself that I didn't pick this up sooner. It was STUNNING!
In his first two books, the story is mostly told from one point of view. In this one, we get multiple voices and it's brilliant.
It's 1954 and Emmett has just been released from Salina, a work farm in Kansas where he has served a year term for involuntary manslaughter. He returns home to a dead father, a precocious eight-year-old brother, and the family farm in foreclosure. The only thing he has to his name is a Studebaker and a plan. But we all know what they say about the best laid plans...
This has the feel of a modern-day Odyssey with a healthy dose of Shakespeare (by way of an actor's abandoned son)--but if you're no fan of either of those, don't let that dissuade you from checking this one out! Another triumph from Towles, can't wait for the next one!
+10 Task, "Adventure" on MPG
+10 Review
+5 Jumbo, 576 pages
+15 Combo: 10.2 (born in Boston), 20.8 ("Billy already had a plate of chili and cornbread in his lap...with the first bite he realized how hungry he was."), 20.9
Task total: 40
Season total: 410
15.1 EoTP ReduxNeverwhere by Neil Gaiman
+15 Task, 2023 St. Louis Literary Award to Neil Gaiman
+5 Oldies, pub. 1996
Task total: 20
Season total: 370
Dave Grohl https://www.hipstamp.com/listing/curt... (the site is a little weird...you have to scroll down a bit to get there: he's the one on the bottom left of the four-stamp set).
According to Wikipedia, Hollywood is a neighborhood in L.A., merged in 1910, so it would definitely work!
20.6 ColeridgeThe Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker
Julia's father--a successful New York lawyer--has disappeared without a trace. Her mother finds a letter he'd written to a woman from the Burmese village he grew up in. Since that's the only clue she can find, Julia decides to travel there in search of any trace of her father.
What unfolds is one of the most beautiful love stories I've read in recent memory. It reminded me a little of Like Water for Chocolate, minus the magical realism. And it wasn't just about romantic love: some of the most powerful moments were about a son's love of his mother and of a guardian's love for her charge.
I enjoyed the writing, which is rare in a translated volume (at least in most that I've encountered)--I'm glad I mostly listened to it, though, because I got distracted by the unfamiliar names/pronunciation of things while reading in the book. I don't know how in the world this story turned into a trilogy--it seemed very self-contained and complete--so I'm curious to pick up the next installment.
+20 Task, #229 on the list
+10 LiT, translated from German
+10 Review
+40 Combo: 10.2 (born in Germany), 10.3, 10.4, 20.1, 20.2 (he wrote non-fiction prior, but this is his first novel), 20.8 ("Tin Win could handle cutlery and his blindness did not prevent him from eating decorously. Not even the soup gave him any trouble."), 20.9, 20.10 (pub. 2002)
Task total: 80
Season total: 350
10.1 TBRThis House Is Haunted by John Boyne
It's been rainy and dark all day and I wanted something atmospheric and, boy!, did this fit the bill...
Eliza has recently and unexpectedly lost her father and her home--her only option is to retain a position as a governess (room, board, salary: check, check, check). Luckily, she sees an advertisement for just such a position at Gaudlin Hall. She is immediately enamored of her charges, Isabella and Eustace. What she's not so enamored of is the house itself. On her first night, the malevolent forces in the house begin their campaign to send her packing--or end her life, which has happened to multiple previous governesses.
Written in the style and spirit of Dickens, this was a great read for a dark and stormy night--or dark and stormy day as the case may be.
+10 Task, put on TBR list 19 May 2019
+10 Review
+15 Combo: 10.2 (born in Ireland), 10.3, 10.8
Task total: 35
Season total: 270
Arthur Miller http://www.philatelia.net/classik/sta...Moliere https://www.freestampcatalogue.com/st...
20.8 Soup's on!The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James
"The Sun Down looked like any normal motel, but we both knew it wasn't. It was just...sleeping, maybe. Napping. Come on in, the building seemed to say with its jagged up-and-down lights, its blue and yellow cheeriness. Get some sleep. Take it easy until the sun comes up again. And if you see someone sitting at the end of your bed, pay them no mind. That's just one of my secrets. And I'm not going to tell."
In 1982, Viv runs away from her Illinois home to New York where she hopes to make her big acting break--only she never makes it to New York City and ends up dropped off and stuck Upstate in Fell. She gets a job at the Sun Down Motel as a night clerk and that's when the motel's ghosts come alive. She soon hears stories about the many unsolved murders that happened not long before she arrived and starts her own investigation. Before the year is out, Viv disappears without a trace.
In 2017, Carly arrives in Fell and takes the night clerk job. She's there to find out what happened to her Aunt Viv.
Even though there were a couple of things that didn't work for me (view spoiler), the story was hard to put down and the creep factor was high. The hotel was *definitely* a character in this one (view spoiler).
+20 Task, "I put my spoon in my soup--chicken noodle, I realized...Viv took a swallow of her own soup."
+10 Review
+10 Combo: 10.3, 10.8
Task total: 40
Season total: 235
20.10 BirthdayAs You Like It by William Shakespeare
Oh, Rosalind, you are in a tight tie for my favorite of the Bard's ladies! Juliet is too young and too ruled by emotion. Ophelia was sweet and stuck between a rock and hard place and eventually paid the price with her sanity. Lady Macbeth was wretched, as were those scheming sisters, Goneril and Regan. Kate went from "Shrew" to witless woman. Nope.
Rosalind and Beatrice are my faves, hands down. They are the only two women whose wits rival that of any man in their respective plays, who are fully-developed characters rather than mere devices to forward the action of the play.
I love rereading Shakespeare because I always notice something new: this time, I realized that Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka sings one of the songs from this play! https://youtu.be/OTq7zhSjqds
+20 Task, pub. 1599
+10 Review
+25 Oldies
+5 Combo: 20.5
Task total: 60
Season total: 195
10.4 SeriesThe Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith
To quote another goodreads review: "For a minute, I was worried that the book itself sucks, based on the steep drop in the ratings. Then I scrolled down a bit and sighed a breath of relief - it’s just people mistaking Goodreads with Facebook or Twitter."
It's crazy that the book was so much about cancel culture and online trolls and now (long after she began writing this installment) Rowling is right at the heart of those very things after her transphobic stance has caused huge online backlash. I had a hard time deciding whether or not to read this one: I love the characters--are Cormoran and Robyn EVER going to get together!?-- and her mysteries are well-paced and well-plotted...but I hate financially supporting someone who has used that money and power to speak out against a marginalized population. I sometimes miss the pre-internet world, when I could read a book and judge it based solely on the writing and not on the author's personal life (since all I ever knew about the author was what was in the mini-paragraph blurb on the dust jacket).
Enough of my existential dilemma. Review: it was LONG, but it was good...maybe not as good as earlier installments in this series, but still solid.
+10 Task
+10 Review
+25 Jumbo, 1,024 pages
+10 Combo: 10.5 (BLACK), 20.10 (pub. 2022)
Task total: 55
Season total: 135
10.3 9, 10, 11Be Frank With Me by Julia Claiborne Johnson
M.M. Banning wrote the great American novel when she was in her 20's--and then disappeared. After losing all of her money in a Ponzi-type scheme, she has to write another book to keep from losing her house. Only now she has a son and needs someone to watch him while she writes. Her publisher agrees to send a minder--anything to help Banning complete another book. Enter Alice: a pretty Midwestern girl who has no idea what she's in for with the precocious ten-going-on-fifty-year-old Frank.
It's been a while since I've fallen in love with a character as quickly and completely as I did with Frank.
There were a couple of plot points that were weak and the book would have been rather formulaic otherwise, but Frank made it all worth it and the bond that he makes with Alice was pretty special.
+10 Task
+5 Selfie bonus
+10 Review
+20 Combo: 10.2 (born in Germany), 10.5 (Tickle ME Pink), 10.9 (Set 99% in L.A.), 20.2
Task total: 45
Season total: 80
10.2 OktoberfestSea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
I insanely loved Station Eleven and--unlike a lot of readers--I quite enjoyed The Glass Hotel, so was excited to see what this new story was all about.
This one felt far quieter...which isn't necessarily a bad thing, just not what I was expecting from a book about time travel and colonizing the moon.
Mandel's writing is as masterful as ever: she's set up a story that could easily be overwhelmed by the sci-fi aspects but is able to keep the focus firmly on the humanity of the characters. And her endings! They are always on point and this book was no exception. Can't wait for her next book to come out already.
+10 Task, born in Canada
+10 Review
+15 Combo: 10.3, 10.5 (SEA Green), 20.10 (pub. 2022)
Task total: 35
Season total: 35
On rereading this task, I realized I neglected to highlight the intent that as long as 75% is in any combination of those cities/states it'd work for this task. Say your book is half in LA and half in NYC--that would work for this task since both LA and NYC have NFL teams.
