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 981-1,000 of 2,800
15.1 CoA 9- lettersBright Dead Things by Ada Limon
+15 Task
+5 Not-a-Novel
Task total: 20
Season total: 1095
20.1 SeriallyThe Body in the Library by Agatha Christie
"Do you like detective stories? I do. I read them all, and I've got autographs from Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie and Dickson Carr and H.C. Bailey."
How much do I love that one of the characters in this book has the author's autograph!?
I absolutely adored the first half of this one--the not-so-subtle humor, the great characters, Miss Marple (this is my first Marple mystery and it won't be my last). As with most of the Christie I've read, I felt like the end was abrupt and wrapped up a little too tidily but I enjoyed the ride.
The Bantrys wake to news that there is a dead body in their library. No one knows who she is or how she got there. First call goes to the local authorities; second call goes straight to Miss Marple, the local spinster who solves crimes based on her years of observing human nature. Several twists, turns, and cups of tea later, she divulges the who/what/why of the matter. Need to go back and read the first Marple mystery now!
+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo: 10.5--shelved as "Classics" 582 times
Task total: 35
Season total: 1065
Kate S wrote: "So, I found this link: https://www.goodreads.com/award/show/....It appears the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award is already on GoodR..."
Yay! And now I'm excited to get this one started...
I'm considering reading The Past Is Never. In the "Literary Awards" section it only shows the book as having won one award, but in the book description itself it states: "Winner of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Fiction Award, and Mississippi Author Award for Adult fiction" so it's technically "on the GR book page"...will that work for this task?
15.4 CoA, 12 lettersAnne of Manhattan by Brina Starler
+15 Task
+50 All Female Authors
+100 CoA Finish
Task total: 165
Season total: 1030
15.6 CoA, 14 lettersBloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler
+15 Task
+5 Not-a-Novel
Task total: 20
Season total: 865
20.10 Musical MysteriesThe Lola Quartet by Emily St. John Mandel
I *loooooved* Station Eleven and merely *loved* The Glass Hotel so was excited to read one of her earlier books.
Sadly, it wasn't nearly as good.
The four members of the high school Lola Quartet have all gone their own way after graduation. Gavin goes to Columbia to become a journalist--only to lose his job and end up back in Florida since he has nowhere else to go. Daniel disappears shortly after the quartet's final performance but soon returns to Florida and becomes a cop. Jack, the musical wunderkind, ends up in North Carolina for music school--but can't quite hack it and has to leave. Sasha had the smarts to leave their small town, but ended up stuck there as a waitress in a greasy spoon. All of these characters are connected by Anna, a lover of music who is dating Gavin (and Daniel), friend of Jack, and half-sister of Sasha, disappears before the end of the school year, leaving rumors of a pregnancy and miscarriage in her wake.
None of the characters is particularly likable. The story bounced all over the place--in time and location--which worked for the unfolding of the story, but made it hard to connect to any of the people involved. The story required far too much suspension of disbelief for a book of realistic fiction. Didn't love :-(
+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo 20.4
Task total: 35
Season total: 845
20.9 AnniversaryA Day Like This by Kelley McNeil
Annie Beyers has an amazing life: a loving husband, an idyllic home in upstate New York, a beautiful five-year-old daughter. Late one Friday afternoon, Annie realizes Hannah's fever has gotten pretty high and her ears are hurting her so she needs to be rushed to the pediatrician before they close for the weekend. On the way in the inclement weather, Annie's car is struck by a truck. She wakes up in the hospital and immediately asks about Hannah...but no one knows who Hannah is. The home she remembered is no longer hers, she and her husband are estranged, she has a career she had always dreamed about...but she doesn't have a daughter.
It was compelling to try to figure out what in the world was going on and I was worried it was going to be ridiculous but it ended well and every question was answered without being *too* tidy. It wasn't exceptional--not the writing or the story and the characters were kinda vanilla--but the story was engaging enough that I didn't resent it. 2.75 stars, rounded up.
+20 Task: "'Here,' she said, walking across the room with a glass of champagne. 'It's a little early in the day...' But I was already taking a sip, letting the bubbling liquid fill my mouth."
+10 Review
+10 Combo: 20.3--4.3 average stars; 20.4
Task total: 40
Season total: 810
20.8 GothicHeart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
This is the first book I've read by Joe Hill, Stephen King's son. I was curious how their writing compared and now I have my answer: it doesn't.
King's books (the one's I've read, at least) have bordered on Literature. Hill's are all story and little style. But that story did not disappoint. There were thrills and chills aplenty!
Judas Coyne is a 50-something (former) rock star in the vein of Ozzy Osbourne and Alice Cooper whose band has all died, whose estranged father is on his deathbed, who is a devoted owner of two German Shepherds, and who cycles through girlfriends so quickly that he can't be bothered to call them by name and only calls them by the state they come from. He has made his career and fortune by tapping into the darkness and carefully cultivates that image. When he hears of an auction for a suit with a ghost attached to it, he buys it instantly as nothing more than a whim/joke.
Unluckily for him, the ghost is real. It is malevolent and it is out to get Judas in a very real way.
It was a great ghost story and was perfect for the Halloween season.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+15 Combo: 20.4, 20.6: Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel (2007), Locus Award for Best First Novel (2008), ITW Thriller Award for Best First Novel (2008); 20.10: his music and rock star career are pivotal to the story, shelved as "mystery" more than 200 times
Task total: 45
Season total: 770
20.7 ExophonicWaiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
This is my first (and last) time reading this play.
I hated it.
I know that there's got to be more going on below the surface. I know there's an awful lot of Symbolism, but I wasn't invested enough to care.
I read the play, listened to an audio recording of it, and watched a production of the play. The only thing I learned from all of it was that it's pronounced "GOD-dough" rather than "ga-DOUGH" (which is how I'd always heard it)...
Maybe I'm just in a bad place and my mind isn't open/inquisitive enough to delve into the Meaning behind the written, but it was not for me.
+20 Task
+10 Not-a-Novel
+10 Review
Task total: 40
Season total: 725
10.10 Group ReadsBraiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
In sharp contrast to the political/horror/underwhelming books I've been reading lately, this book had a glorious peace to it. Yes, it discussed the way that humans are effecting the planet in disastrous ways. Yes, it touched upon the decimation of a people at the hands of a greedy and grasping oppressor.
But it mostly focused on the wisdom of nature, the way that the Earth provides for all of our needs, and ways that we can more harmoniously fit into this world. I needed the kindness of this book and the reminder that life is a cycle...
We had to put down our cat, Simon, a few weeks ago and it is one of the hardest things I've ever gone through...I haven't been able to pick up my computer to post on here because he would always come running when he'd hear my typing and crawl up into my lap...this hurts so much to know he won't come running ever again. I don't know how to explain why, but this book was a balm to my soul in this difficult time and I can't wait to get my own copy to revisit again and again.
+10 Task (thank you, Karen Michele, for the fantastic recommendation)
+10 Not-a-Novel
+10 Review
+25 Combo: 10.3; 10.4; 20.3--4.56 average rating; 20.5--b. 1953; 20.6--Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award (2013), Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers Award for Nonfiction (2015)
Task total: 55
Season total: 685
10.8 MediterraneanThe Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim
I remember watching this movie over and over with my Mom when it first came out on VHS. It was on perennial rotation with A Room with a View and Truly, Madly, Deeply...all very British, very lovely, absolutely delightful.
I felt that same delight in reading the story. It was an added pleasure to hear internal dialogue of the characters that you miss in the movie (though the movie was rather loyal to the book in every meaningful way).
Two married women, a widow, and a single socialite find each other through a London paper's classified ads. This unlikely group rent a castle in Portofino. Once under the Italian sun, these tight buds all begin to blossom in different ways.
It's funny, it's heartwarming, and it was a pleasant distraction.
+10 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo: 10.5--shelved as "Classics" by 766 users
Task total: 25
Season total: 630
10.2 HalloweenThe Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump by Michiko Kakutani
Well researched and well written, this book not only talks about the precarious state of politics in the US right now but tackles basic human psychology and how it is being used to destroy the idea of "truth": "[a] report called this Putin model of propaganda 'the firehose of falsehood'--an unremitting, high-intensity stream of lies, partial truths, and complete fictions spewed forth with tireless aggression to obfuscate the truth and overwhelm and confuse anyone trying to pay attention." It was both disheartening and eye-opening...and I know that I have been a victim of that firehose: I'm utterly exhausted by trying to fight the lies and insanity and feel like my hands are tied and just want to hide in my shell. If you're in the market for a political book, this one was a quick and interesting read.
+10 Task, "Death"
+10 Not-a-Novel
+10 Review
Task total: 30
Season total: 605
15.10 CoA, 20+ lettersWhen Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice by Terry Tempest Williams
+15 Task
+5 Not-a-Novel
Task total: 20
Season total: 575
15.5 CoA, 13 lettersMaid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive by Stephanie Land
+15 Task
+5 Not-a-Novel
Task total: 20
Season total: 555
Since they are considered veterans of the war, I’d say it definitely fits the spirit of the task. It’s a yes for me!
Ach, I've been so bad about checking this thread! So sorry!As for Mary's question about "main character"...
As far as this task goes, the best way I can think to describe that would be: the character in question is crucial to the direction of the narrative. Sometimes that means they play a large part in the novel (Harry Bosch, Cormoran Strike, Yossarian), sometimes they are ancillary while still crucial. For example, I would consider Mr. March from Little Women a main character because he is so present in the lives and choices of Marmie, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy even though he's not IN much of the novel itself.
Don't know if that helps answer your question, hope it does :-/
10.7 ServiceLady Death: The Memoirs of Stalin's Sniper by Lyudmila Pavlichenko
After reading The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II by Svetlana Alexievich, I'd been curious to read other accounts of female soldiers in the Red Army...finally, three years later, I found a book to fill that desire.
Lyudmila Pavlichenko's memoir was at times nail-biting and fascinating--war stories from the unique perspective of a sniper; recounting her time in the U.S., Canada, and Britain and meeting the Roosevelts, Churchills, and Stalin--but in almost equal measure boring--the specific ballistics of each gun, the names of each member of the army hierarchy, and geographical details that mean nothing without pictures or a map to elucidate.
It is very interesting to hear this war story told by such a unique perspective: a woman, a member of the Communist Party, a Russian (she never referred to "World War Two": it was always "the Great War for the Fatherland" which highlighted the fact that their losses and their experience of the war was SOOOO different from the historical perspective with which I'm most familiar).
+10 Task
+10 Review
+10 Not-a-Novel
+15 Combo: 10.2: "Death"; 10.9: "Lady" Margaret Hall; 20.3: 4.18 average rating
Task total: 45
Season total: 525
Kate S wrote: "Anika wrote: "*My point tally is different from what is on the updated readerboard...according to my records I'm at 470 through post 300 while the readerboard reflects 460 through post 300...I can'..."THANK YOU! That's exactly it. I won't make that same mistake for my future posts, promise :-) Sorry about that!
