Cory Day’s
Comments
(group member since Aug 18, 2012)
Cory Day’s
comments
from the Reading with Style group.
Showing 601-620 of 1,205
10.8 Two for OneGhosts by Paul Auster (97 pg)
and
Dirty Cop by Kyle Adams (4,590 words=15 pages)
Review: I snuck Ghosts in under the wire, since I don’t expect next season to include a spot for a book under 100 pages. I’m not won over by Paul Auster – he’s certainly clever, but I’m not finding his stories either particularly deep or particularly entertaining. I expect others feel differently, or these wouldn’t be basically classics. I think my biggest disappointment is that I don’t “feel” New York in these all that much. This one was, again, a story of someone basically waiting and watching another person, with little language and literature tricks interspersed. Of course, I also read the last 2/3 of it really quickly so I could get this in before bed, so maybe I didn’t give it its due.
Dirty Cop is a short (very short) free story that basically just contains sex. It’s fine and kind of cute, but since I like a heavy dose of romance with my erotic content, it wasn’t a winner for me.
+10 Task
+10 Review
Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 2120
And that’s it for me – great challenge, everyone!
15.10 (round 2) O-KOne Con Glory by Sarah Kuhn
+30 Task
Task Total: 30
Completion Bonus: 100
Grand Total: 2100
Krista wrote: "20.5 Mystery WomenA Grave Denied by Dana Stabenow
Main Protagonist = Kate Shugak
Review:
I am so enjoying this series. Kate Shugak is a three dimensional character..."
Congrats back to you :)
Ok, I'm starting to plan :) I think these should all qualify, but obviously they need approval...The Rules of Scoundrels
Spin Saga
The Penwich School for Virtuous Girls
Drakon
Amour et Chocolat
I'll stop there for now - I'm sure more will follow :)
10.2 RussianTsarina by J. Nelle Patrick
+10 Task (set entirely in Russia)
YA, no Lexile – no style points
Task Total: 10
RwS Completion Bonus: 100
Mega Bonus: 200
Grand Total: 1920
10.5 Author AchievementsCity of Glass by Paul Auster
Review: I’m not sure how to review this, because I don’t know exactly what I feel about it. I think I need to read the rest of the trilogy to make a fully formed opinion. What I do know is that I think I expected both more and less from this. After reading little bits beforehand about how this was postmodern and playing around with the detective novel and such, I thought there would be more to it that there was in the end. It’s kind of a story within a story within a story maybe within another story, but nothing exactly happens. There were interesting moments, and I don’t feel like I am “missing” something or “don’t get it” – I’ve read a couple of analyses since finishing and they basically echo what I understood – it’s just that I guess I wasn’t wowed.
+10 Task
+10 Review
+5 Oldies (pub 1985)
+10 Combo (10.3, 20.4)
Task Total: 35
Grand Total: 1590
20.3 HistoricalRoots: The Saga of an American Family by Alex Haley
Review: Roots is one of those books I’ve seen on the shelf my entire life – my parents had a copy from the 70s, which is the copy I ended up reading – but I never really felt a great need to pick it up. I’ve never even seen the miniseries. But when I found it on the list of historical fiction books that have real history, I picked it up, just to get sort of confused because while it reads like a novel, and Haley even mentions that the dialogue, etc. are novelized, it turns out to be shelved as nonfiction at every library I checked. Regardless of that, the book itself is interesting and important, not least because it’s amazing how much of his family history Haley was able to trace. So few families remained pretty much intact through their time as slaves, let alone kept oral histories alive that provided enough clues to find their roots in Africa. I have to admit that I almost wish the last chapter were situated as the first one, because Haley’s search for his family tree was the most interesting part and may have made me feel more invested in the first portion of the book, which was in such an unfamiliar setting. Regardless, I’m glad I read it, if only to contribute to Haley’s goal that he states at the end – to provide the story of people who weren’t the typical winners of history.
+20 Task (#88 on list)
+10 Review
+5 Oldies (pub 1976)
+10 Jumbo (729 pages)
Task Total: 45
Grand Total: 1535
10.4 Sovereign StatesBeauty from Pain by Georgia Cates
Review: I haven’t read Fifty Shades of Grey, and I know there are a ton of billionaire romances out there, but I feel like this one might be a tame homage to Fifty Shades. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it – the characterizations were rather shallow and the emotions were clunky. Laurelyn is on vacation in Wagga Wagga, Australia when she meets a mysterious man who wants a three-month relationship – the only catch is that he won’t divulge his name. Jack acts a little like a stalker at the beginning, and all the secrecy is silly and probably pretty easily broken in a world with Google, but he kind of won me over by the end, at least enough to kind of want to read the next book since this one ended less than satisfactorily.
+10 Task (set entirely in Australia)
+10 Review
Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 1470
10.8 Two for OneThe Lady Always Wins by Courtney Milan (74 pages)
and Dueling Magics by Stephanie Burgis (4,370 words=14 pages)
and Good Breeding by J.L. Merrow (5,941 words=19 pages)
Review: The Lady Always Wins is a stand-alone novella by Courtney Milan about a man coming back for his childhood sweetheart. Of course, being Courtney Milan, it’s not that simple – Simon thinks things are a certain way, but Ginny completely subverts his expectations. I was pretty much left wanting more, as I often am with shorter stories, but it was a good story nevertheless.
Dueling Magics is very short and serves as a quick interlude between the first and second in Burgis’s Kat, Incorrigible series. Kat is fun and it shines a little light on what is yet to come – I want to go back to the series and read the second book at some point, definitely.
J.L. Merrow is quickly becoming one of my favorite romance authors, and I’m sad that my library doesn’t have more of her work. Good Breeding was a free short story, and I would totally read an entire novel or even series based on the characters. I have to be careful or I’ll spend way too much money and time just reading all of her books. They aren’t just simple male-male romance stories – they deal with issues of class and tolerance in a subtle way that really works.
+10 Task
+5 Combo (10.4 – set entirely in the UK)
+10 Review
Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 1435
Kate S wrote: "From Post 739Cory Day wrote: "20.7 18th Century
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Review: Mansfield Park is different from the Austen novels I’m more familiar with, like ..."
I literally JUST edited that post and my subsequent post's grand total because I remembered that ;)
10.4 Sovereign StatesWhat a Wallflower Wants by Maya Rodale
Review: The third book in the Badboys and Wallflowers series was cute, but I almost wish I’d read it much closer to the others. Most of the historical romances I’ve been reading seem to be blurring together in my mind, so it took a while to figure out what world I was back in. This book is fine, but the plot is kind of lacking. The character development is good, and I’m kind of becoming fond of footman heroes, but this one really was just a piece of the trilogy rather than a book that had a really defining storyline of its own, outside of the characters’ learning about themselves and each other.
+10 Task (set entirely in UK)
+10 Review
Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 1410
20.7 18th CenturyMansfield Park by Jane Austen
Review: Mansfield Park is different from the Austen novels I’m more familiar with, like Emma and Pride and Prejudice. Instead of a really strong personality at the center in the form of someone like Lizzy Bennett or Emma Woodhouse, Fanny Price almost disappears on the page most of the time. This does allow for the side characters to really shine through, and it turns out Fanny is maybe manipulating the situations from behind the scenes more than it might seem at the time, but I have to say I prefer the more outspoken protagonists. It’s not my favorite Austen novel of all time, but Austen at her least entertaining is still witty and insightful, so I’m glad I read it. I think I’ve only got one of her books left to read, and that’s sort of sad.
+20 Task (published 1814)
+15 Oldies
+10 Review
+5 Jumbo (507 pages)
+5 Combo (10.4 – set in UK)
Task Total: 55
Grand Total: 1390
20.2 PersephoneMiss Pettigrew Lives For A Day by Winifred Watson
Review: I have slated this book for challenge after challenge and always returned it to the library unread. I finally picked it up today and finished it easily over the course of the day. It’s delightful, sweet, charming – all of those kinds of things. Miss Pettigrew ends up helping the people she meets by injecting some down-to-earth conservatism, but she ends up gaining much more by expanding her world and allowing herself to have some fun. Aside from the occasional racist remark, it could easily have been written as historical fiction rather than contemporarily in the 1930s. Miss Pettigrew is so fun and the people she ends up getting involved with are so eccentric that I just wish I could continue her story. I’ll have to settle for watching the movie and imagining all the best for her and her new friends.
+20 Task
+20 Combo (10.4, 20.1, 20.4, 20.9)
+10 Review
+10 Oldies
Task Total: 60
Grand Total: 1320
