Cory Day’s
Comments
(group member since Aug 18, 2012)
Cory Day’s
comments
from the Reading with Style group.
Showing 281-300 of 1,205
15.10 – Dominoes Too Good to Be True by Kristan Higgins
(from One Good Earl Deserves a Lover by Sarah MacLean – word Good in title)
+30 Task
Task Total: 30
Dominoes Completion Bonus: 100
All Female Bonus: 25
Grand Total: 910
15.9 – Dominoes One Good Earl Deserves a Lover by Sarah MacLean
(from Satisfaction by Sarah Mayberry – both first names Sarah)
+30 Task
Task Total: 30
Grand Total: 755
15.8 - Dominoes Satisfaction by Sarah Mayberry
(from Darkness Hunts by Keri Arthur – both authors born in Australia)
+25 Task
Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 725
20.4 Elfriede Jelinek (2004) Forget Love by Babsy Tom
Review: This book was pretty unremarkable, except for the fact that it was translated. Now, translated books are rare enough in the US, but translated “women’s fiction”/romances are practically unheard of. It’s a mediocre example of a light, slightly humorous story of a woman figuring herself out much later in life than you might expect she’d have done it. Penny wakes up at the beginning of the book not remembering anything about her life, and must figure out a way forward. I found the amnesia stuff kind of unbelievable, but what do I know? The characterizations were kind of shallow as well – I feel like maybe it would be a fun series, since the side characters were cute – but in general it was nothing all that special to me.
+20 Task (Babsy Tom is a woman from Germany who wrote this in German)
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.9 – 3.09 – oops, I reduced it from 3.11 with my review)
Task Total: 35
Grand Total: 700
15.7 - Dominoes Darkness Hunts by Keri Arthur
(from Cost of Repairs by A.M. Arthur – last name Arthur)
+25 Task
Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 665
10.2 NoelHot Head by Damon Suede
Review: I was hesitant to read this, since it involved firefighters and I really really hate reading about fires. Luckily, there weren’t all that many “on the job” scenes, especially later in the book. This was also my first “gay for you” leaning romance, which is a trope I’ve never been all that interested in. Each man was in love with his best friend, Griff for ten years and Dante for some unspecified period of time. The convoluted plot involves Dante’s getting Griff to do porn with him to get money to save his house, and the characterization was a little all over the place. In the end, I’d read more of the series and more from this author, but I think I would’ve liked a peek into Dante’s point of view.
+10 Task
+10 Review
Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 640
10.6 Australia DayRansom by David Malouf
Review: I wasn’t sure how this book would turn out to sit with me, especially after a couple of not so great reviews by other group members of some of the author’s other books. So, I was pleasantly surprised when I just sank into this and enjoyed every bit of it. Do I think it’s “great literature” and worthy of a ton of prizes? I don’t know, but I really don’t care. Malouf expands what he says in the afterward is about 6 lines of the Iliad and makes a short book out of it. It makes me want to reread the Iliad, especially since I’m not sure if I ever actually read it in high school like I think I did. I can’t speak to how accurate it is to anything, but for a charming little story I definitely enjoyed it.
+10 Task (2010 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature - fiction)
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.9 – 3.82)
Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 620
15.6 - Dominoes Cost of Repairs by A.M. Arthur
(from Word Puppets by Mary Robinette Kowal – both published in 2010s)
+25 Task
Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 595
15.5 - Dominoes Word Puppets by Mary Robinette Kowal
(from Forever And A Day by Mary McBride – both first names Mary)
+15 Task
Task Total: 15
Grand Total: 570
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Cory Day wrote: "I'm guessing maybe this won't work, but it's worth a shot. I've been checking books I'm reading to see if they fit here, and there's a book called Sense of Place that is throwing o..."I figured. It's just for combos so I think I'll give up on some of these ;) Thanks for looking!
I'm guessing maybe this won't work, but it's worth a shot. I've been checking books I'm reading to see if they fit here, and there's a book called Sense of Place that is throwing off some of the results. Anyway, I did find this list, but it's not a review exactly: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/9....Thanks!
15.4 - DominoesForever And A Day by Mary McBride
(from Tonight & Forever by Brenda Jackson – both published 1995)
+15 Task
Task Total: 15
Grand Total: 555
10.4 Love StoriesFlowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale
Review: Flowers from the Storm is a historical romance novel, but it is really more a story of a man’s fight to recover from an (at the time) unknown brain injury. Kinsale has said she wrote him as having a brain aneurysm and intentionally made him left-handed because I guess it can be easier to recover the speech parts of the brain for lefties. The heroine, Maddy, is a Quaker, which I personally found the least interesting part of the story. It added her own religious questions as roadblocks to their relationship, and took over the end of the story in a way that distracted from many of the other real issues. Regardless, it’s a wonderful study of how awful it must have been to have a mental or brain illness in the 19th century – the parts set in the asylum were truly harrowing.
+10 Task
+5 Jumbo (533 pages)
+10 Review
Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 540
20.6 Svetlana Alexievich (2015) - Soviet experienceThe Endless Steppe: Growing Up in Siberia by Esther Hautzig (Lexile 940)
Review: The Endless Steppe tells a World War II story that isn’t told often. Esther Hautzig and her family, Jews living in Vilna, Poland, were exiled to Siberia when the Soviet Union was in charge of their city. In this fictionalized account, she tells the story of the five years that were spent in the bleakest part of Russia that she nevertheless came to love. All in all, the deportation actually saved her from greater horrors, since most of her extended family perished in the Holocaust when Germany took over Poland. The book itself is less interesting than the historical context, and I was surprised at its 940 Lexile score, but I probably would’ve loved it as a kid.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.9 – 3.95)
+5 Oldies (pub. 1968)
Task Total: 40
Grand Total: 515
10.2 NoelNo Matter the Wreckage by Sarah Kay
Review: Poetry is one of those genres I have a hard time with, mainly because when I read I don’t hear words in my head very often. Since that’s basically the point of poetry, it doesn’t quite stick. This collection worked though – and now I’d like to possibly reread it someday, as well as look up some of Sarah Kay’s spoken word clips on YouTube. It’s a charming little collection, with some poems reading almost like short stories. Some are serious, many are quirky, and most have something to do with some component of love. For a quick last minute addition to my 2015 reading, I couldn’t have picked a better book.
+10 Task
+10 Review
Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 475
20.3 Toni Morrison (1993) - Charleston SyllabusThe Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist
Review: I’d read a couple of books about the Great Migration earlier this year, and decided it was time to go back a century in history. Baptist doesn’t just tell a story of slavery – he tells the story of how so many of the contentious issues in American politics have been around from the very beginning. Whether it’s the lack of concern for black life, pervasive income disparity, or the way banks can control entire economies, this book shows none are new issues. I do wish the parallels had been drawn more clearly at times – I could see the threads, but I’m not sure it would convince someone who didn’t want to be convinced. Regardless, it’s clear that we’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Jumbo (528 pages)
Task Total: 35
Grand Total: 455
15.3 - DominoesTonight & Forever by Brenda Jackson
(from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin – born USA)
+15 Task (born USA)
Task Total: 15
Grand Total: 420
10.4 Love StoriesThe Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen (Lexile 840)
Review: Sarah Dessen is one of those authors I’d heard a lot about but never read, so I figured it was about time. I might have missed my window for her, since for whatever reason YA hasn’t been hitting me quite right recently. Still, The Truth About Forever is a decent book – a little angsty, a little real, a little romantic – but this particular kind of protagonist tends not to be my favorite. Whether teenaged or not, the kind of character that just allows her life to be directed by others is not something I relate well to – I guess I’m too stubborn. I’m glad Macy went through a development process, but it got a little frustrating at times. I added another of Dessen’s books to my ever-expanding TBR, but I doubt I’ll be picking it up anytime soon.
+10 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.2)
Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 405
10.9 Realistic RatingsThe Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
Review: Samantha Shannon was twenty-three years old when The Bone Seasons was published, and I guess in the UK maybe it hit bigger than in the US, or I’m just completely out of the loop. Regardless, while not classified as YA and featuring a slightly older protagonist, this fits well with big YA dystopian kind of series. The story itself was a little uneven – the beginning and middle full of detail that may or may not actually be relevant to the overall story, with the end picking up a lot of pace and stopping some of the infodump – but it definitely managed to keep me engaged by the end. I came close to downloading the second book in the series since it ends to some extent in the middle of the action, but since the third isn’t out yet, I think I’ll try to hold off a little.
+10 Task (3.73 rating)
+5 Combo (10.2)
+10 Review
+5 Series
Task Total: 30
Grand Total: 380
10.5 Favorite AuthorsForbidden by Kelley Armstrong
Review: I finished reading Kelley Armstrong’s Otherworld novels a while ago, which is how she ended up qualifying for this task, but I still had a few of the novellas left to read. It’s a good thing, since I was less a fan of her YA novels I’ve read, and it was fun to be back in this world. This is part of a series of in between shorter stories happening around the main events of the novels in the series, put out by Subterranean Press. I’m glad I didn’t pay the $24.99 shown on the jacket, since I expect it’s mostly that expensive due to the illustrations in it, which I didn’t particularly like. Don’t pick this up if you haven’t read the series, because while the mystery is pretty straightforward, I don’t think much of the world or character details would make much sense. For fans, I’d suggest finding it at the library if you miss following Elena and Clay.
+10 Task
+5 Combo (10.8 – born in Canada)
+10 Review
+5 Series
Task Total: 30
Grand Total: 350
