Cory Day’s Comments (group member since Aug 18, 2012)

Cory Day’s comments from the Reading with Style group.

10.7-4 Letter Names

Under His Kilt by Melissa Blue

+10 Task
+5 Combo (10.5)

Task Total: 15
Grand Total: 75

10.6-Book Lovers

Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines

+10 Task
+5 Combo (10.2, 20.5)

Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 60

10.5-Novellas

All Your Reasons by Nina Levine

+10 Task (130 pages)
+5 Combo (10.7)

Task Total: 15
Grand Total: 40

20.5-R.K. Narayan

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

+20 Task (post 167)
+5 Combo (10.2)

Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 25

It's my own task, but I still don't trust myself to get some of the nuances correct right now.

Nova Ren Suma seems to have taught in multiple places, but it's a little unclear what her exact title is: http://novaren.com/bio/

Naomi Novik

Novel: Throne of Jade
Short Stories: The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Graphic Novel: Will Supervillains Be on the Final?: Liberty Vocational Volume 1

Jim C. Hines?

Novels: Libriomancer
Short Stories: The Goblin Master's Grimoire
Non-Fiction (essays): The SFWA Handbook: The Business Side of Writing, By Writers, For Writers

Thanks!

20.8 Best of 2015

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Review: This book has been all over almost every type of culture I consume – podcasts, blogs, probably even television shows. I’m not sure what I expected from it, but it was both exactly right and totally different. It truly is a letter to his son. It’s a very long letter, written in three parts. I think I would’ve caught more of it better if I’d at least have read each part at a time, because I ended it feeling like I should read it again, this time taking notes, highlighting, and really taking it in. The thing that stood out to me most is that Coates uses very nuanced language. For example, when he speaks of race he uses the phrase “people who think they are white” rather than just assuming white is a thing that has never changed. He acknowledges, not to diminish the black experience, but to highlight the ludicrous nature of these distinctions, that race is fluid. In one century a group of people – the Irish, Italians, whatever – may not have been treated as white, which in this context means equal, good, and worthy of respect.

+20 Task
+10 Review

Task Total: 30
RwS Completion Bonus (second round): 100
Grand Total: 2180

And that's it for me. Glad I got to that one.

10.5 Favorite Authors

Brazen by Kelley Armstrong

Review: Brazen is a novella that’s technically number 13.3 in the women of the underworld series, but it kind of sits mostly independent of the rest of the books. Certain backstories were easier to understand because I’ve read all the books, and I wouldn’t start there, but it was a nice little peek into Nick’s world. I don’t think I’d seen much, if anything, from his point of view before, and that was nice. The mystery itself was less a mystery and more just a chase with more and more gruesome clues, but the story was fine. I would’ve loved a little more romance and a little less violence, but it fit right into the world Armstrong created so many books ago.

+10 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.8)

Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 2050

20.6 Svetlana Alexievich (2015) - Soviet experience

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

+20 Task (set almost entirely in Siberia during WWII; the rest in Lithuania, which was part of the USSR)
Low Lexile – no styles

Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 2025

10.10 Group Reads

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

Review: Within the first twenty pages of this book, I was sure I was going to hate it. First it seemed like it was fetishizing paper (as opposed to digital) in a way that turns me off. Then the author, in the hopes, it seemed, of seeming clever and fleshing out his characters, kept adding detail to the background that I found distracting, unnecessary, and in one instance pretty much wrong (I’ve never heard of an Ionian column. Ionic column, yes. Ionian people, sure. Ionian column… probably technically accurate but not the right term). But then I got stuck in a situation in which I had nothing much to do except read this book, and the author stopped setting it up and started actually moving the plot forward, and suddenly it started living up to the premise. I still think Sloan thinks he needs to seem cleverer than he needs to be, but sometimes I even laughed at some of those bits. So, a two-star beginning and a maybe four-star journey landed me at a nice solid three stars. Thank you, Robin Sloan, for pulling it around – I hate hating books!

+10 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.9)

Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 2005

I find it fascinating watching the polls go back and forth every season. I personally prefer to find ways to let my set of books be as broad as possible. That kind of conflicts with the desire to get multiple combos, which seems to be extra important to many of the rest of you!

20.3 Toni Morrison (1993) - Charleston Syllabus

Beloved by Toni Morrison (870 Lexile)

Review: Toni Morrison is such a force in the literary community, but until now I’d only read one of her books, and barely remembered it (it was for a class and the only thing I remember clearly is that a friend of mine cherry-picked every instance of the F word to quote in his paper because he was a 16 year old boy…). Anyway, I remember The Bluest Eye as being unflinchingly grounded in reality, although my memory could easily be faulty. Beloved is not 100% grounded – it flies off unpredictably into a sort of folklore/magical realism tale that didn’t bother me at first, but by the end was disconcerting at best. This may be one of those books I don’t “get”, at least in the last quarter of it. Or it’s not supposed to settle well. Or some combination. In any case, when the more fantastical elements first entered the story I was comfortable with them. Morrison seemed to strike a balance that allowed the unflinching reality to mix with folklore in an understandable way. But like the central character, by the end I was left adrift. I may go read some analyses of it to see where others stand, but I do know I’ll pick up more Morrison sometime in the future.

+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Oldies (1987)
+5 Series
+10 Combo (10.9 – 3.74, 20.7)

Task Total: 50
Grand Total: 1985

10.1 Write Your Own

Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology by Ann VanderMeer

Review: Anthologies like this have to be difficult to compile, because you’re trying to hit a number of marks and not everything will appeal to everyone. I think I appreciated it more than I LIKED it, but short story collections can be that way. Anyway, it’s pretty much exactly what the title suggests – the editors got stories from across science fiction and fantasy from a number of eras, all with a feminist theme. It’s kind of depressing how many similarities there are, no matter when the stories were written – made me feel sometimes like we haven’t progressed at all. I was happy for the opportunity to read bits from a bunch of authors who were familiar to me but I hadn’t read before, and at least a few of the stories will probably stay with me for a long time.

+10 Task (http://www.locusmag.com/Magazine/2015...)
+10 Review

Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 1935

20.10 Leap Year (EXTRA)

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

Review: I finally finished! It took over a month, but this book is due back to the library tomorrow and my 25 pages a day finally paid off. I picked it up because I’ve been obsessively listening to the hip-hop infused musical version that’s so big on Broadway right now, but the musical is a lot more fun. Chernow did a lot of in-depth great research to write this (definitive?) biography, but it’s DENSE. And LONG. Getting through it wasn’t easy, but I did learn a lot, and was reminded of even more. It was often depressing to see how little my country’s politics has really advanced since the 1700s, but good to be reminded. My biggest complaint was that where historical documents didn’t present an entire picture the author often put in his two cents. He could’ve cut those moments, and in my opinion the book would not have been worse for it but might have been a few pages shorter. I do want to read Jefferson and Burr biographies to see the differences in the telling – Chernow is obviously on Hamilton’s side of history, but that’s only one piece of the puzzle.

+20 Task
+10 Review
+15 Jumbo (818 pages)

Task Total: 45
Grand Total: 1915

10.3 Sci Fi Day

Brightness Falls from the Air by James Tiptree Jr.

Review: This one was rough for me to get through. It wasn’t that the book is bad – not exactly. It definitely didn’t click with ME, but it wasn’t that anything was explicitly wrong with it. The author was one I’d heard a lot about, and I felt like I should read something by her (Tiptree is a pen name, and one that was hidden for a number of years). Anyway, Tiptree is more well known for writing short stories, and I could see how she excelled in that realm. The bare bones of this novel were great – the writing was good, the characters were fascinating, and the world was interesting. The problem I had was with the plot. It was convoluted and didn’t make much sense to me, so I had a hard time making my way through it in its entirety. I actually ended up reading a short story by Tiptree in an anthology I was reading concurrently with this, and I wish I’d picked up a short story collection instead.

+10 Task
+10 Review
+5 Oldies (1985)
+5 Combo (10.9 – 3.74)

Task Total: 30
Grand Total: 1870

10.9 Realistic Ratings

Her Mad Hatter by Marie Hall

Review: I’m not sure what I was expecting from this first entry in a fantasy romance series that seems to have a kind of cult following, but it wasn’t exactly what I got. The premise is fun – the Mad Hatter is a bad boy who needs to find love, and Alice has always believed in Wonderland and loved the Hatter. I thought it would actually almost turn out to be more erotica than romance, but it wasn’t – there was sex, but not all that much of it really and not very explicit. Instead, the story was much darker than I expected, and the end, while happy as any romance novel should be, really threw me off. I might pick up the next one in the series, but I don’t think I’d pay for it.

+10 Task (3.79)
+5 Series
+10 Review

Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 1840

20.4 Elfriede Jelinek (2004) - European woman

Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968 by Heda Margolius Kovaly

Review: Under a Cruel Star is definitely more a story of the later years in the subtitle than the earlier ones. Not a typical Holocaust novel, the ghettos and concentration camps are merely introductory, although the ramifications thread through the rest of the story. It basically ends up as a cautionary tale – not of communism exactly, but of becoming complacent, of thinking groups of people will learn the lessons they so desperately should. It shows a part of human nature, most prevalent in groups rather than individuals, that is scary and awful. It’s also relevant to our time, with stories in Europe of anti-Semitism, ongoing problems in the United States… scary.

+20 Task (Czech woman, translated from Czech)
+10 Review
+5 Oldies (1986)
+5 Combo (20.6 – set entirely in Prague (with something like 1 page somewhere in Poland from 1941-1968)

Task Total: 40
Grand Total: 1815

I used to listen to a short-lived podcast called Small Blue Planet, which talked about science fiction in different parts of the world. The first episode was about Finland: http://www.locusmag.com/Roundtable/20...

I don't think I've read any of it, but the show notes have a list of authors available in translation. At least some should be sci-fi. Maybe it'll help :)

10.7 Cozy Holidays

Artifact by Gigi Pandian

Review: Cozy mysteries are hit or miss with me – I have to either believe enough that the central figure would be embroiled in the mystery against all odds, or it has to be so over the top that I just ride along with it. I guess this one kind of did both, but regardless I really enjoyed it. There were times when the writing felt a little immature, but it really hooked me when Lane’s past was revealed. I’m a little bit a sucker for him now, and kind of want to follow the rest of the series if only to follow Jaya’s love life.

+10 Task
+10 Review
+10 Combo (10.2, 10.9 – 3.77)
+5 Series

Task Total: 35
Grand Total: 1775