Anika’s
Comments
(group member since Dec 25, 2011)
Anika’s
comments
from the Reading with Style group.
Showing 1,801-1,820 of 2,800
10.7 Crazy Rich Asians...or Not!How to American: An Immigrant's Guide to Disappointing Your Parents by Jimmy O. Yang
I thought it fitting to read this book, written by one of the actors who was actually in the movie adaptation of Crazy Rich Asians :-)
Jimmy O. Yang first hit it big in his role of Jian Yang in HBO's "Silicon Valley" and while it was fun to hear about his experiences on the show, the story of how he got there was far more fun.
His family emigrated from Hong Kong when he was 13-years-old. He couldn't speak English beyond the basics he had learned in school. To improve his English skills, he turned to the tv--BET, to be precise. It was so fun to hear him read this book, the way he can switch up his accent for effect.
He went to UCSD with a major in Economics--which he never used. He went into stand-up instead, much to his father's horror. To pay the bills, he was a used-car salesman, a DJ at a strip club (where he almost ended up entrenched in the seedy mob underworld), an Uber driver, all while renting someone's couch for $300 a month to get by. If it weren't true, it would be too ridiculous to be believed.
I quite enjoyed his writing style--very funny and silly, and then he'll drop a profound idea with complete nonchalance then continue with the narrative as if nothing special was said. I quite enjoyed his take on the "immigrant experience."
There was a lot of cursing in this book, so if you're sensitive to that I'd definitely steer clear. It was definitely good for a laugh.
+10 Task (born in Hong Kong)
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.9, "Immigrant's"=10 letters)
Task total: 25
Season total: 2255
20.4 BirdsongHistory of the Rain by Niall Williams
I'm always in the middle of at least three books--one on my Kindle that I read before bed (I'm looking at you, The Sorrows of Young Werther--you have the innate ability to shut my eyes after three pages!); an actual book of paper, cloth, and glue from the library; and, finally, an audiobook that I can listen to as I'm attempting to get the infernally long list of things done around the house and in the yard to prepare for winter. History of the Rain was my audiobook, read in a lovely Irish brogue, which so completely transported me into Faha (specifically into the Swain home) that I kept finding myself staring off into the distance so I could more completely let the river of words wash over me. Don't even get me started on the last seven chapters--I couldn't get a thing done because I was crying so hard I couldn't see straight!
This book is charming, lovely, powerful, infused with poetry and built on the bedrock of a library of dead authors, I want to buy several copies in order to give them out as Christmas presents to all of the readers I know.
This is my favorite kind of book: the kind that leaves me wrung out, yet incandescent...if you've seen Amelie, there's a part where she walks a blind man around the streets and describes everything she sees and once she leaves him, he looks to the sky and begins to glow--that's how I feel. I love a book that takes me in, hands me a cup of tea, and tells me a story so real that I felt I've lived it. This is such a book. Thank you so much, Elizabeth, for bringing this one to our attention.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+10 Combo (10.10, 20.6)
Task total: 40
Season total: 2230
20.3 Birds without WingsThe Turkish Gambit by Boris Akunin
This is the second in the Erast Fandorin series, but the first that I've read.
Set in 1877, Russia is at war with the Ottoman Empire. Independent and daring Varya has made her way to the front to be with her fiance. Upon her arrival, she finds out that he has made a fatal error which cost many lives and is now under arrest facing execution and her only hope of saving him is to work with a man she met on her journey to the front, Erast Fandorin. In another review, I saw him described as a Russian high-functioning autistic version of Sherlock Holmes and that sounds just about right.
I loved Erast--sadly, I felt like he was absent for much of this book. It mainly followed Varya as she was flirting with the men of the camp, with generals and journalists (and it seems giving very little thought to her fiance) to glean bits of information to help save her fiance. She was supposed to be a feminist Bolshevik, very cutting-edge for her day--I found her to be far more damsel-in-distress and she irked me big time. If I ever read another of these books, I certainly hope she won't be in it and that there is far more of the quirky Erast.
+20 Task (shelved 5 times as "turkey")
+10 Review
+15 Combo (10.2; 10.5--https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6... "salamandra" has been okayed in help thread; 20.5--Varya is single throughout the book and lives on her own in the soldier's camp which is as close to "head of household" as you can get on the war front)
Task total: 45
Season total: 2190
15.4 AbBY, Chronological 1895-1899The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder (born 1897)
+20 Task
Task total: 20
Season total: 2145
15.3 AbBY, Chronological 1890-189450 Poems by E.E. Cummings (born 1894)
+20 Task
Task total: 20
Season total: 2125
15.2 AbBY, Chronological 1885-1889Selected Poems by T.S. Eliot (born 1888)
+20 Task
Task total: 20
Season total: 2105
Nov 03, 2018 01:02PM
The copy I have is paperback. Thank you! Hope the winter isn’t coming on too quickly up your way—we have snow in the mountains already, didn’t have much in the way of “fall” :-(
Nov 03, 2018 12:31PM
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Anika wrote: "50 Poems by E.E. Cummings doesn't have a page count on the MPE. The only place I'm finding an accurate page count is on the Amazon listing for the book at..."I just picked the book up from the library and it does have 101 pages--but it looks like there are quite a few blank pages (each poem is allowed two pages, but many only require one page thus leaving the facing page blank). I'll see if I can get another E.E. Cummings collection (I was going to use it for 15.3, so I still have some time as I'm not quite done with my book for 15.2).
Re: Worldcat pagination...I wonder if they just looked for any number at the bottom of the page--at the bottom of the pages are listed the number of the poem, which would not be a correct number of "pages" (In a normal book it would start with the bottom left page saying "1" and the facing page on the right saying "2" and continuing on so when you turned the page it would be "3" and "4", etc. In this book, the bottom left of the first page says "1" with nothing on the right page, then you turn the page and it says "2"...so it's counting the poems not the pages. Pages=101, poems=50 but since it's numbering the poems and not pages "50" is the last number to appear.)
Nov 03, 2018 11:03AM
50 Poems by E.E. Cummings doesn't have a page count on the MPE. The only place I'm finding an accurate page count is on the Amazon listing for the book at 101 pages. Hoping that is sufficient...?
15.1 AbBY, Chronological 1880-1884Selected Poems by William Carlos Williams (born 1883)
+15 Task
Task total: 15
Season total: 2085
20.2 To Conquer HellWar's Unwomanly Face by Svetlana Alexievich
This book was stunning, harrowing, devastating, and hopeful. It is a compendium of over 200 women's experiences of WWII. The original edition of the book which came out in the '80s is 100 pages shorter than the edition I read--the later publication was able to include several accounts which would have been banned before the dissolution of the Soviet Union (one woman asking, "Are you allowed to write about this? Before, you weren't..."). Not only were things censored by the state, women's husbands and family members encouraged these women to censor themselves...
This is one of the most beautiful and raw books that I've read in a long time. It took me nearly a month to read it--I'd have to set it aside because, despite the moments of (rare) humor and beauty, there was so much blood and death it was hard to bear. There was so much heartbreak contained in each tale, but there too was hope. ("Do you know how beautiful a morning at war can be? Before combat...You look and you know: this may be your last. The earth is so beautiful...And the air...And the dear sun...")
It was fascinating to hear these women's stories. This book was not only well-written, it was Important. 5 giant, gleaming stars.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+10 Prizeworthy
+5 Oldies (first published either 1983 or 1985--I've found both dates and don't know which is accurate)
+20 Combo (10.2; 10.5--https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3... ; 10.9, "unwomanly"=9 letters; 10.10--thank you for the amazing suggestion, Lalitha!)
Task total: 65
Season total: 2070
20.6 The Stone CarversLincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
This book....argh! It was like seeing one of Picasso's cubist paintings--disjointed boxes that have clues contained in them and after a prolonged study, you start to see a person and a guitar and a table and perhaps a newspaper and you feel like, "Oh, that's cool, I get it now," and you like it because you had to work at it to uncover the key to understanding it, not necessarily because you actually like it.
I listened to about five minutes of this book and couldn't understand it to save my life. I was SO confused. So decided to read it with the good old eyeballs. Equally confused. At the 25% mark, I detested this book, but refused to let it beat me. I have too many friends who have raved about it to give up. At the 66% mark, I still disliked it but the picture was starting to come together. There was perhaps ten percent of this book that I absolutely loved and by the end I can say that I "got" what Saunders was trying to do--it was novel, it was ambitious, it was outside the box. But just like that Picasso painting that I can now "see", just because I put in the work to understand it doesn't mean I like it.
I give it 2.75 stars, rounded up to 3.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Prizeworthy
+5 Combo (10.5--https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...)
Task total: 40
Season total: 2005
10.2 Next?Lethal White by Robert Galbraith
For all my avowed dislike of mysteries, I'm realizing I read (and love) more of them than I'd originally realized. I LOVE "Galbraith"'s Strike series. I love the main characters (Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott), how real they are: their foibles and insecurities, their imperfections and humanity make them utterly believable. I think the main reason I'm not a fan of mysteries is they are so entirely plot-driven, that the characters become cogs in a machine built to reveal the complex set of circumstances devised by the author. Not so in this series. I know this is probably sacrilege to say, but I think I might enjoy this series as much as (if not a little bit more than) her Harry Potter series. (Cue the public shaming.) Lethal White just dropped in September and I'm already dying to get my hands on the next one!
+10 Task (#4 in the Strike series)
+10 Review
+5 Jumbo
Task total: 25
Season total: 1965
20.7 A Month in the CountryMem by Bethany C. Morrow
When I first read a review about this book, I was immediately drawn to the idea of memory extraction--reminded me of my favorite movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. As I started reading, there was still a very cinematic feel to it, I could clearly see everything as if I was watching a black and white movie (it is set in 1925, after all, so it seemed fitting), something along the lines of Metropolis--even though this book doesn't contain any sort of robotic/sci-fi elements, the strangeness of the technology described makes my mind go all Fritz Lang.
In the early 1900s in Montreal a technology was developed to remove a traumatic memory--but in doing so, it created a copy of the person you were in that moment, a living memory. Dolores has this done in 1909 after witnessing a car crash and Dolores Extraction No. 1 is born. Only she is different from all the earlier memories (or "Mems")--she is cognizant. She can interact outside of the confines of the memory that has been extracted. Eventually, with the help of two friends and patrons, she is able to move into her own apartment and function in society.
That is where the book starts--1925, she's been on her own for some time, when she is suddenly recalled to the Vault (the place where all Mems are housed).
There were so many philosophical questions raised in this book I don't even know where to begin--but I think that's why I enjoyed this short piece so much.
+20 Task (184 pages)
+10 Review
+5 Combo (20.1)
Task total: 35
Season total: 1940
10.10 Group ReadsThe House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea
Big Angel knows he's going to die, but he wants to go out with a big old birthday fiesta before that happens. Of course, his mom has to go and die before his big day. That's okay, since family is coming from all over for the birthday: it'll be a combined funeral/birthday celebration! And the family that's coming--wow, the stories they have hidden inside of them.
I loved this book. It was beautifully written, relatable, real, and speaks difficult truths with compassion and humor. I loved the characters, they were fully formed and imperfect and easily identifiable--which is a feat when there is a cast of characters as large as this one. I particularly loved that it would bounce around in time, changing and deepening your perception of the characters...characters who had been built up to paragons in the community have their blemishes revealed, increasing their 3-dimensionality.
I did listen to this one (still get drowsy when I sit down to read, dumb pain meds!) and it was lovely, read by the author (which is sometimes terrible, but in this case was perfect).
+10 Task (thanks for the recommendation, Kate!)
+10 Review
Task total: 20
Season total: 1905
20.1 War's EndA Test of Wills by Charles Todd
It's funny...I didn't think I was one for mysteries, but I find lately that I'm coming around. It started with the Louise Penny Inspector Gamache series--with her lush descriptions of Three Pines, the delicious food her characters indulge in (it always makes me hungry for pastry and poutine!) (though not together, of course), and the lovely townsfolk...the murder and untangling of the whodunit seem superfluous. I started reading that series on the recommendation of my aunt who is a librarian.
Well, my aunt who is a retired English teacher recommended this mystery series to me so I had to give it a shot. As in the Penny series, I like the strong sense of place and time--the idea of using a WWI war veteran I find quite unique and interesting (view spoiler). Ian Rutledge is sent to his first post-war assignment, to investigate the murder of another war vet. The stakes are high--if he fails, he'll embarrass Scotland Yard, cause scandal at Buckingham Palace (one of the suspects has connections there), and probably end up at an asylum for "shell shock." Mostly, he wants to prove to himself that the war hasn't taken everything away from him, that he still has the understanding of human foibles and motives that made him an inspector in the first place.
I think another interesting facet of placing the stories in post-War Britain is the very staid manners and customs are changing at a pace never before seen, so we get a mix of very proper and antiquated ideas alongside more radical thoughts from the various characters we encounter (and there are A LOT of characters to keep track of).
I liked it enough to read the next one, but probably not immediately.
+20 Task (100% set in 1919)
+10 Review
+5 Prizeworthy
+15 Combo (10.2; 10.5--https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7... ; 20.5--Lettice is single, head of household now that her guardian is dead which happened before the novel began)
Task total: 50
Season total: 1885
Thank you, Elizabeth and Karin, for your well wishes! (I just saw them--I haven't been back to this thread since my last post!) This healing thing is a struggle...I always heard how terrible this surgery is an adult, but it's worse than I ever could have imagined. :'-( I think the worst part is the pain meds keep knocking me out, so I've been falling in and out of consciousness so it's really hard to get ANYTHING done....reading has been a struggle, but listening to books has been easier (though I'm not finding the books I need in audio version: there's the rub!).
I really do have a question that belongs in this thread ;-)
Would War's Unwomanly Face work here (the copy I have has an additional subtitle, "An Oral History of Women in world War II", if that helps clarify the book at all)? I'm hoping so, as it's a similar format to Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster which has already been approved.
Anyway, hope everyone is well and enjoying autumn (the leaves are turning stunning shades of gold, orange, and scarlet here and I can see the mountainside turning red from my window).
10.1 Favorite ListsFrom Ann post 790 list, https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/2..., #48 on the list:
Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
This is my first time reading this play...it has been years since I've seen My Fair Lady (which was based on this play) and I sure don't remember it ending this way. I also don't remember Henry Higgins being such a remarkable ASS. I mean, I remembering his being asinine, but as he's written in the play, he is a selfish, self-important, raging misanthropist (though, from his point of view he's simply pragmatic: reminds me of Sherlock Holmes in that he's so focused on his field of study that he is blind to everything and everyone, not remotely concerned with how poorly he treats people--I guess his one redeeming quality is he treats everyone the same: duchess and flower girl, they're all the same to him).
This had some interesting takes on class, relationships between men and women, and the roles of men and women in society (I was particularly saddened and frustrated by Eliza's new reality, that by educating and improving herself she had fewer options for her future than she had as a flower girl on the streets--as a refined lady, she couldn't work, couldn't go back to what she had done before, couldn't do anything other than stay in the unsatisfactory situation she found herself in or marry). The men in this play sure thought they were smart, above reproach, and infallible. I hate that Eliza was seen as a THING, if she was seen at all. She was a commodity to her father, who essentially sold Eliza to Higgins; she was merely an experiment to Henry; she was treated with kindness and respect by Colonel Pickering, but even he isn't faultless.
Despite my dislike of some of the main characters, I quite enjoyed the play as a whole.
+10 Task
+10 Review
+10 Oldies (first pub. 1912)
+10 Combo (10.5--MPE is published by Penguin; 10.9--"Pygmalion"=9 letters)
Task total: 40
Season total: 1835
10.4 BookshelvesSlade House by David Mitchell
I was looking at the 21st Century Literature book list and comparing it to what was available as an audiobook from my library and this was the first book I found where those two lists collided. I knew nothing about this book, have never read anything by David Mitchell, and was utterly unprepared for what I heard therein. It was amazing! Perfect for this time of year (a little spooky, bordering on scary), it was a little Neil Gaiman, bits of House of Leaves, and one of the extra-long episodes of Doctor Who all wrapped into one.
(view spoiler) I got wrapped up in the world quite quickly and thoroughly enjoyed the twists and turns that the author threw my way.
+10 Task (on 21st Century Literature list)
+10 Review
+15 Combo (10.5--https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... 20.4: each chapter is in a different time period, total spanning 50 years; 20.5--Norah is single, never married, head of her own household)
Task total: 35
Season total: 1795
10.3 Real PlaceA Thousand Miles to Freedom: My Escape from North Korea by Eunsun Kim
"Eunsun Kim" (she said in the forward that she couldn't use her real name or the real names of several characters in order to protect family still in North Korea) has lived a tremendous life: her grandparents and father died in the great famine in the 1990s leaving her mother, older sister, and herself to fend for themselves. In order to escape starvation, her mother makes the bold decision to escape North Korea.
I can't wrap my head around the courage that would take: to have NOTHING--no money, no food, no home or assets to sell, no transportation, no familial support--except for love of your children and sheer courage to escape a murderous regime.
This was a truly incredible story and an eye-opening look at the isolationist country.
While I responded to the story itself, the story telling (the text of the book itself, which is what I am rating) itself was not very good, thus the 3 star review.
+10 Task ("North Korea")
+10 Review
+10 Combo (20.5: her mother was single, widowed head of household--at one point she was sold to a man who wanted her to bear his son, but he never married her and they were attached to his household for only a short time; 20.10: A thoUsand mIles tO frEedom)
Task total: 30
Season total: 1760
