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

Anika’s comments from the Reading with Style group.

20.4 Day of the Jackal

The Last One Home by Victoria Helen Stone

+20 Task

Task total: 20
Season total: 145

10.9 Discovery

A Garden to Dye For: How to Use Plants from the Garden to Create Natural Colors for Fabrics & Fibers by Chris McLaughlin

+10 Task
+5 Combo: 10.6: second = garDEN COlorS

Task total: 15
Season total: 125

10.8 Singles

Serendipity by Melanie La'Brooy

+10 Task
+5 Combo: 10.3, set 90% in Australia

Task total: 15
Season total: 110

10.7 Genre-rich

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

+10 Task, "historical" and "cultural"
+15 Combo: 10.2, 118 pages; 10.3, Ireland; 10.6, time = sMall ThIngs likE

Task total: 25
Season total: 95

10.6 NYE Countdown

The Lightest Object in the Universe by Kimi Eisele

+10 Task, hour = tHe Object UniveRse

Task total: 10
Season total: 70

10.4 Vocation

The Library of Lost and Found by Phaedra Patrick

+10 Task
+5 Combo: hour = tHe libRary fOUnd

Task total: 15
Season total: 60

10.3 Location

The Library at the Edge of the World by Felicity Hayes-McCoy

+10 Task, 100% set in Ireland
+5 Combo: 10.4

Task total: 15
Season total: 45

10.2 Short

The Carrying: Poems by Ada Limon

+10 Task, 120 pages
+5 Combo: 10.6 time = The carryIng: poEMs

Task total: 15
Season total: 30

10.1 List Lovers, "Best Short Stories" Listopia

Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days by Jeanette Winterson

+10 Task
+5 Combo: 10.6 time = chrIsTMas storiEs

Task total: 15
Season total: 15

Don't know if it's required to post which list we'd like to use, but just in case:

I'll be using the "Best Short Stories" Listopia
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

15.8 CoA, 16-17 letters

First Frost by Sarah Addison Allen

+15 Task
+50 All female authors
+100 Finisher bonus

Task total: 165
Season total: 1800

15.9 CoA, 18-19 letters

Comfort Me With Apples by Catherynne M. Valente

+15 Task

Task total: 15
Season total: 1635

15.4 CoA, 12 letters

You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson

+15 Task
+5 Not-a-Novel

Task total: 20
Season total: 1620

15.2 CoA, 10 letters

Girl Walks Out of a Bar: A Memoir by Lisa F. Smith

+15 Task
+5 Not-a-Novel

Task total: 20
Season total: 1600

15.6 CoA, 14 letters

She Kills Me: The True Stories of History's Deadliest Women by Jennifer Wright

+15 Task
+5 Not-a-Novel

Task total: 20
Season total: 1580

15.3 CoA, 11 letters

Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Díaz

+15 Task
+5 Not-a-Novel

Task total: 20
Season total: 1560

20.4 Non-linear

The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel

Eva and her parents are living in Paris when the Germans invade. Their lives have gotten smaller and more desperate with each new edict handed down regarding Jewish life and livelihood, but at least they still have each other. Until all of the Jews are rounded up and shipped off. Eva and her mother were at a neighbor's house babysitting when soldiers come for them--and take her father.
Eva knows the only chance they have of saving him is by saving themselves first. She is a talented artist and is able to forge papers for herself and her mother to escape to a city in the South of France which has been a sort of underground railroad ferrying escapees to Switzerland. (Apparently, it's based on a real town: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20... )

The action in the book bounces back and forth between the war years and 2005, when Eva sees a relic of her war years splashed across the pages of the New York Times.

It was a little too tidy at the end, which is never my favorite...the writing was okay--Elizabeth would be severely underwhelmed ;-)--but it served the story well. I will say that I read the first half of the book on my e-reader and listened to the second half of the book and it fared MUCH better as a read book as opposed to a listening experience.

+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo: 20.3: 4.37 avg. stars
+100 RwS Finish
+200 MegaFinish

Task total: 335
Season total: 1540

15.10 CoA, 20+ letters

The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

+15 Task
+5 Not-a-Novel

Task total: 20
Season total: 1205

20.6 Awarded

Sweat by Lynn Nottage

There's something about a play that has the ability to either turn you off entirely (I'm looking at you, Waiting for Godot) or put you right in the thick of the players lives that builds an amazing amount of understanding and empathy, changing the reader/viewer forever. Sweat definitely falls into the latter category.
The entirety of the play takes place in a bar in Reading, Pennsylvania, a manufacturing town. It starts after the plant has closed and quickly goes back in time to better days. The action centers primarily on a pair of mothers and sons who all work at the plant, the bartender who worked at the plant for most of his life until he was injured, and the dishwasher at the bar. This touches on a lot of hot-button issues: race, the opioid epidemic, and NAFTA and disappearing jobs in the American working class to name a few.
Despite the depressing nature of the story, I really loved having read this and feel changed as a result. Nottage is the only woman to have won the Pulitzer in Drama twice and it's well-deserved--this woman knows how to craft a powerful play!

+20 Task: Pulitzer Prize for Drama (2017), Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (2016)
+10 Not-a-Novel
+15 Combo: 10.3: professor at Columbia; 20.3: 4.17 avg. rating; 20.5: b. 1964

Task total: 45
Season total: 1185

**Rebekah! Re: your earlier inquiry in group chat--I think this would fit the bill...even though it's not as easy to talk people into reading (plays are certainly more niche than novels), I think you'd appreciate it.

15.7 CoA, 15 letters

Call Me Athena: Girl from Detroit by Colby Cedar Smith

+15 Task
+5 Not-a-Novel
+5 500+ pages (576 pages)

Task total: 25
Season total: 1140