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

Anika’s comments from the Reading with Style group.

10.2 PC

Paper Girls, Vol. 2 by Brian K. Vaughan

This installment was a bit of a let-down...it has middle-book syndrome: just a continuation of what began in the first volume without anything momentous happening...just trying to keep the story going. Not to say I want to quit anytime soon, though. I still love the style, the story, the badass papergirls and they weirdness they find themselves in...was just hoping for more from this volume.

+10 Task
+5 Review

Task total: 15
Season total: 2430

20.10 RtM

The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin

Set in Glasgow
Country: Scotland
Continent: Europe

Lenni is seventeen. She was born in Sweden, her mother left when she was little, she's got a wicked sense of humor, and she's in the terminal ward.
Margot is eighty-three. She's been in love once, married a couple of times, has lost a child, and now she's in hospital awaiting surgery.
Lenni meets Margot in the most unlikely of circumstances and they become the most unlikely of friends. The hospital has recently implemented art classes (art therapy to soothe the patients) and Lenni has somehow finagled her way into the senior's class. She realizes that together, she and Margot are one hundred years old. They embark on a project of painting one picture for every year of their lives. Lenni has decided to write up an explanation for each picture so Margot has to tell the story of each of her pictures for Lenni to transcribe.
I am sad to be done with the book because it meant saying goodbye to some of the best characters I've met in a while. Not just Lenni and Margot, but New Nurse and The Temp and Father Arthur to name a few.
I listened to this one and so glad I did. I love the Scottish accent and the readers' timing and pauses added so much to the tale. Five giant, gold-glittery stars.

+35 Task
+5 Review
+100 Finisher Bonus
+50 10 different countries (Japan, Poland, India, England, Cuba, Egypt, Australia, South Korea, USA, Scotland)
+100 6 continents (Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, Oceania, South America)

Task total: 290
Season total: 2415

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Anika wrote: "I am having a struggle and need some insight, Elizabeth…
I finished a lovely book which is set in a hospital in Glasgow. They never leave the hospital for the duration of the book, bu..."

YAAAYY!! Thank you! You just saved my poor brain from the hamster wheel its been on!

I am having a struggle and need some insight, Elizabeth…
I finished a lovely book which is set in a hospital in Glasgow. They never leave the hospital for the duration of the book, but one patient tells the other stories of her life which occur outside of Glasgow and those stories account for more than 25% of the book…
so will it fit (since she’s sitting in a hospital in Glasgow while relating her stories) or not (since many of her stories—and therefore many pages—happen outside Glasgow)?

20.9 RtM

Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood

Set in Melbourne
Country: Australia
Continent: Oceania

I've seen and enjoyed a few episodes of the Phryne Fisher mysteries on Netflix, but the book was sooo much better!
The writing is so clever and funny ("She had put on her lounging robe, of a dramatic oriental pattern of green and gold, an outfit not to be sprung suddenly on invalids or those of nervous tendencies"...that was the first and certainly not last time I found myself crinkling my eyes in delight)...I'm in love with the cast of characters and the setting in 1920s Melbourne is divine. Can't wait to read the next one!

+25 Task
+5 Review
+5 Pre-'96 (pub. 1989)

Task total: 35
Season total: 2125

10.6 PC

The Last Book on the Left: Stories of Murder and Mayhem from History’s Most Notorious Serial Killers (304 pages) by Ben Kissel

My husband is a fan of "The Last Podcast on the Left" which is what this book stems from. Books based on podcasts always seem a little iffy in my head, since what works best about a podcast (the conversational style, the voice inflection and intonation that set the mood) are lost on the page. Well, he ended up getting the Audible of this one so we listened to it and I'm still left cold.
I love true crime and serial killer stories--don't ask me why, I couldn't explain. Maybe it's a twisted case of "there but for the grace of God go I"? I especially like the true crime tales that focus on the victim's lives and the way that the killers were caught: it feels like a memorial to those who lost their lives. In this book, you have one voice reading the meat of the story and one voice piping in with comedic asides. It works ok in a podcast form--comic relief and all--but in the book (where they crammed in every joke they could, to the point that they just felt like filler), it feels relentless and cruel to the memories of those who died and like it definitely crossed a line. No thanks.

+10 Task
+5 Review

Task total: 15
Season total: 2090

10.7 PC

Bloom (368 pages) by Kevin Panetta

I wanted to like this one...I did love all of the baking and the music that was going on, but I didn't love the main character or the disjointed feel to how the whole "love story" fell into place. Perhaps I would have liked it more had I not read so many exceptional graphic novels this season to compare it with.

+10 Task
+5 Review

Task total: 15
Season total: 2075

20.8 RtM

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

Set in Cleveland, Ohio (pop. 385K)
Country: USA
Continent: North America

If Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted happened in an IKEA and wasn't nearly as well written, you'd get this book.
I was drawn in by the cover, which looks like the cover to an IKEA catalog...it made me chuckle at first, but when you look at the pictures on the wall more closely you see that it's a ghost trying to get through the wall. Immediately intrigued. Should learn my lesson already, deciding to read a book based solely on its cover...
It starts out moderately humorous and you see the potential for creepiness (every time I walk into an IKEA, I see the potential for creepiness...), but then it devolves into gruesome and entirely unbelievable and it lost me. It was a campfire horror story gone awry. Had such high hopes for a good scary story: still wishing for one :-(

+25 Task
+5 Review

Task total: 30
Season total: 2060

10.8 PC

The Hate U Give (444 pages) by Angie Thomas

I know there has been big buzz around this book ever since it came out. I know a movie has been made based on it. All my friends who have read it have *raved* about it...but I KNEW I was going to bawl and fume and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries and I just never quite felt up to that level of sorrow/frustration for 444 pages.
I'm glad I decided to face up to it. It was an important read. It was heart-wrenching and funny and real and I loved the characters and hated the situations they found themselves in. I'm grateful to the author for not shying away from the big themes (racial inequality, police brutality, economic disparity...) while also giving the reader moments of light and laughter.

+10 Task
+5 Review
+100 Completion bonus

Task total: 115
Season total: 2060

20.7 RtM

Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton

Set in Havana
Country: Cuba
Continent: South America (for RtM's purposes)

I learned so much about Cuban history that I'd never quite realized before, and that was the best part about this novel for me.
I never quite connected with the characters, the mirrored experience of grandmother/granddaughter was a little too spot-on, the love-at-first-sight thing always stretches the imagination a bit too far for a work of "literary fiction", and the *surprises* were pretty predictable. And I didn't love the writing style.
All that negativity aside, I loved the sense of place that the author develops...I could see/hear/smell/taste Havana and that's what I was really hoping for from this story. It delivered that in spades.

+25 Task
+5 Review

Task total: 30
Season total: 1945

10.1 PC

You Have Arrived at Your Destination (46 pages) by Amor Towles

Randomize (28 pages) by Andy Weir

The Last Conversation (56 pages) by Paul Tremblay

Thank you, Rachel, for reminding me about the Forward collection! I'd downloaded the Amor Towles story ages ago and had entirely forgotten it languishing unread on my kindle...
In these selections from the sci-fi collection we get a terrifying dip into designer genetics, a lark of a story about ripping off a Vegas casino using quantum technology, and a post-pandemic Frankenstein-ian tale. They each delivered a different brand of thrill and chill and I can't wait to start my next round of "Page Count" so that I can read the other three stories in the series!

+10 Task
+5 Review

Task total: 15
Season total: 1915

20.6 RtM

The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar

Set in Bombay (Mumbai)
Country: India
Continent: Asia

Bhima has cleaned Sera’s home for twenty years, made her food, run her errands. Over that time husbands have been lost, children have died and disappeared, and tragedy has struck both of them. Bhima lives in Bombay’s slums with her granddaughter; Sera lives in an opulent upper-middle class apartment with her pregnant daughter and son-in-law.
This luscious character-driven novel moves like the tide at Chowpatty Beach: slowly and inexorably. I definitely took my time with this one and I don’t know if it was because of the subject matter (abuse of power, educational inequality, caste system, poverty, etc) or the fact that there’s not a lot of action to draw the reader in, but I’m glad I stuck with it.

+25 Task
+5 Review

Task total: 30
Season total: 1900

10.7 PC

My Brother's Husband, Volume 2 (352 pages) by Gengoroh Tagame

What a great way to finish this story…it really came full-circle <3
I was a little shocked when I read that the author is mainly know for his “gay BDSM erotic manga”—I never would have guessed that based on this story and these characters! Again, I’m loving how much Japanese culture I’ve gleaned from this series and I’m sad it’s over but so glad to have encountered and read it.

+10 Task
+5 Review

Task total: 15
Season total: 1870

10.10 PC

Blankets by Craig Thompson

I looked at several "Best of" lists for graphic novels when deciding which ones to read this season. This one showed up on *a lot* of lists, so I was curious to see what all the fuss was about.
It was not at all what I expected. Firstly: it is giant and heavy and carrying it home from the library counted as my workout for the day (to be fair: I was carrying five books of similar size, so it was moderately strenuous). Secondly: it was a memoir, walking you through a difficult childhood, crises of faith, and the roller coaster of first love. I wasn't expecting that (I know...I should have...I'm sure it was in the synopses on all of those lists I was looking at...but after looking at so many, I only remembered titles and not descriptions). Thirdly: I was not expecting to identify so strongly with the story: the cruelty of kids; the self-discovery and self-doubt of the teenage years (and very specifically of the early '90s, when I was also in high school...the band posters on the walls and the songs they reference were very much a part of my life); the intense interest and desire to belong in a faith practiced by everyone in your community and the eventual departing from said faith...
It definitely put me through the wringer, emotionally, but at its essence it was lovely and heartbreaking and infinitely relatable.

+10 Task
+5 Review

Task total: 15
Season total: 1855

20.5 RtM

If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha

Set in Seoul 80%
Country: South Korea
Country: Asia

When I first started this, I almost wondered if it was supposed to be sci-fi...then I realized: Nope, it's just South Korean. The obsessive preoccupation with plastic surgery, beauty, money, and K-pop stars...the misogyny, the "room salons" (brothels), the class disparity. I felt very foreign reading this book, which switches between the voices of four women who live in the same building: Ara, the mute hairdresser who is in love with a K-pop star from afar; Kyuri, a room salon girl who is so deep in hock to the Madame that she'll be selling her body for the rest of her life; Miho, an orphan whose art talent secured her a scholarship in New York; and Wonna, a married lady who is pregnant and trying to navigate the politics of the workplace and the inbuilt misogyny in that arena.
We get virgin, whore, maiden, and mother (even crone, in the form of the Madam, though she's only a small role)...all of the tropes to show the different trials that women face in South Korea (though, of course, those trials aren't contained by borders).
It was good...but it took me a week and a half to finish a book that was fewer than 300 pages, so it didn't really grab and hold my attention.

+20 Task
+5 Review

Task total: 25
Season total: 1840

15.10 TDoS

A Fire Story by Brian Fies

Deedee (I'm so glad to have found this on your shelf! I hadn't even heard of it before and so glad to have read it!)

Oof.
This graphic novel memoir documents the author's loss of his home in the 2017 Northern California wildfires. I think it tells the story better than any news broadcast could, any podcast or NPR interview could, more than a written memoir could. You see the devastation (mixed in with the drawn cels are photos taken by the author) and hear the firsthand trauma and loss. It was powerful and scary--it felt absolutely immediate, like I was living through all of that devastation right alongside him.
It was one of the more powerful things I've read in recent memory and I was not expecting that. Easily 5 stars...now excuse me while I pack my go-bag (grandpa's service Bible from WWII; the quilt my grandma gave me as a wedding present; my dad's teddy bear from when he was little; piles of pictures spanning from my infancy to my wedding--thank heaven for the cloud, that more recent pictures are all safely ensconced there!...all the things I would be devastated to lose but wouldn't think about grabbing in an emergency....I know it's all just stuff, but Fies points out in this graphic novel: "But it was our stuff. Stuff we created. Stuff we treasured. Stuff from our ancestors we wanted our descendants to have. Stuff is a marker of time and memory. It's roots.").

+45 Task
+5 Review
+100 Completion Bonus

Task total: 150
Season total: 1815

15.9 TDoS

Paper Girls, Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan

Steph => Deedee

I loved the Saga series so much; I've been eagerly anticipating geting to this volume in my TDoS chain, another story penned by Brian K. Vaughan.
I'm loving it so far, but in a completely different way than I loved Saga: Saga told a great story but it was also *about things*...racism, war, classism, etc. while Paper Girls is just a weird, fun story. Set in Ohio, 1988, the paper girls (ah, so I guess it sorta touches on sexism for a hot second) are up early and out delivering their papers on Hell Day (Nov. 1...all the creeps are still up and out from Halloween revelry). They've already had a run in with one group of jerks when one of the girls is attacked by another group of guys. Only these guys are aliens? Time/space travelers-but-not-in-the-good-Doctor-Who way? It definitely has a Stranger Things/X-Files vibe and I can't wait to get more.

+45 Task
+5 Review

Task total: 50
Season total: 1665

10.5 PC

The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak

The premise is weak (1987, three boys are obsessed with getting their hands on a copy of Playboy so one of the boys is tasked with charming the shopkeeper's daughter into giving them the security code to the store so they can break in to steal the magazine), but the characters are mostly likable--dare I say, endearing? It was reminiscent of Ready Player One in tone, but definitely for a YA audience. It was a pleasant diversion but readily forgettable. 3 stars.

+10 Task
+5 Review

Task total: 15
Season total: 1630

15.8 TDoS

Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

Emilia => Steph

Maybe Anya's Ghost suffered an unfair assessment since I read this immediately upon finishing that one (my hold for Anya's Ghost just came through today, but I checked this one out a few weeks ago and it was due today so I had to read them quick!), but this one ticked all the boxes!
It's a series of short stories that are intense and atmospheric, it's like sitting around a campfire and telling ghost stories...
The art is perfect for these type of stories: spare and shadowy, favoring a red and black palette. I loved the writing. I didn't *love* one of the stories, but the rest were so strong that gets a 4.5-rounded-up-to-5 stars for me. Wish I hadn't already returned it...I'd love to read it again now that it's dark out...

+45 Task
+5 Review

Task total: 50
Season total: 1615

15.7 TDoS

Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol

Bea => Emilia

Anya emigrated from Russia with her mother and brother when she was five. She doesn't really fit in at her school, has one friend (frenemy?), has a crush on a guy who has the perfect girlfriend already...one day she falls down an abandoned well. She lights up a cigarette to calm down and sees that she's not alone: there is a skeleton down there with her...and the ghost of the girl whose bones those are. After two days with only Emily the ghost for company, someone finally hears Anya's screams for help and she gets out of the well. When she gets home, she finds out that Emily has followed her...
The story felt a little bare-bones and didn't really connect to the characters, but there were a few freak-out moments and any graphic novel that can make my skin crawl isn't all bad.

+30 Task
+5 Review

Task total: 35
Season total: 1565