Cory Day’s
Comments
(group member since Aug 18, 2012)
Cory Day’s
comments
from the Reading with Style group.
Showing 621-640 of 1,205
So if I'm understanding correctly, a series will work as long as SOME of the narration differs from book to book? I've also read the whole Game of Thrones series and Martin only adds and kills off narrators - he doesn't abandon them.I've read all of these already, but as an example, the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon SHOULD qualify under the GOT rules:
Outlander and Dragonfly in Amber only have Claire's perspective, if I recall correctly...
Voyager adds Brianna's/Roger's perspective...
...and it moves on from there. Claire is present and narrates in all of the books, like some of the characters in Game of Thrones keep reappearing, but other perspectives are added and removed.
So does that count? I have a lot of romance series I can read that I'm sure will qualify, but I'm trying to understand the rules :)
15.2 (round 2) D-VThe Duke of Snow and Apples by Elizabeth Vail
+15 Task
Task Total: 15
Grand Total: 1260
20.9 Respect EldersPortnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
Review: I began this book basically expecting to hate it, and for the first twenty-five percent of it Roth surprised me. While it held up to my expectations of being about pretty much nothing except Alexander Portnoy’s sexual exploits, with a dash of his dad’s constipation and a large dose of Jewish guilt, at first I found it funny. Then it got monotonous. The last twenty-five percent was kind of excruciating – thank goodness it’s a short book – but I got through it. I don’t see evidence from this, though, that Roth is really as much a genius as it seems some people think – or maybe more accurately, I wish a different type of writing were seen as genius.
+20 Tasks (born 1933, still alive)
+15 Combo (10.5, 20.4, 20.6)
+5 Oldies (published 1960)
+10 Review
Task Total: 50
Grand Total: 1245
15.1 (round 2) C-WA Conspiracy Of Decency: The Rescue Of The Danish Jews During World War II by Emmy E. Werner
+15 Task
Task Total: 15
Grand Total: 1195
20.10 Goodreads FeatureWe Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
Review: I have at least two podcasts lined up and waiting to be listened to because they discuss this book and warned about spoilers, so I’m glad I finally got to it! It’s not much like anything I’ve read before, and mostly in a good way. The beginning is a little confusing, and I think some people ended up being put off by that, but I absolutely loved the middle. Rosemary is narrating her story from 2012, but is mostly discussing her freshman year of college more than a decade before. That was kind of interesting, because she entered college the same year I entered high school, so her experience was very similar but in a lot of ways totally different – technology really changed pretty quickly during that time. All you know at the beginning is that Rosemary is currently her parents’ only child in essence, but that in the past she had a sister and a brother who are no longer in the picture. As befits a freshman in college, she ends up finding herself, so to speak, confronting parts of herself she’s been repressing for years. It’s not an easy book to summarize, but I did enjoy it, and am looking forward to seeing what those podcasts have to say about it!
+20 Task (approved in thread - off The Goldfinch)
+10 Review
Task Total: 30
Grand Total: 1180
I keep getting distracted from finishing all of the tasks by historical romances - that Island Dreams task is too tempting! My favorite part of this time in the challenge is that we get to look forward to seeing next season's tasks coming in the next few weeks! I love completing the challenges, but it's possible I like planning for them even more...
10.4 Sovereign StatesThen Came You by Lisa Kleypas
Review: Then Came You was published in 1993, and its age shows a little. It’s not quite so bad as some older historical romances, but I definitely prefer more recent entries – the gender dynamics and the way it treats consent skirts the line with me. The premise is pretty simple – Lily is a “bad girl” by reputation, and when she realizes her sister is engaged to a cold, unfeeling earl when she’s really in love with a less rich man, she sets out to stop the marriage. Alex and Lily hate each other but come to care for each other. It’s got a bunch of tropes I like, but unfortunately the pieces never quite came together. I liked the side characters more than the main characters, no one quite grew enough for me to completely buy into the happily ever after, and the early love scenes were not consensual for my liking. It’s not a bad book, but I think there’s a reason I mostly stick to romances published in this century.
+10 Task (set entirely in the UK)
+10 Review
Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 1020
10.10 Group ReadsToo Much Happiness by Alice Munro
Review: I’ve heard a lot about Alice Munro and how she’s a master of the short story and of telling tales of ordinary life – two things I’m not always much of a fan of. However, Munro proves that when put in the right hands, short stories and ‘literary fiction’ can convince me. At first, the title story, which closes out the collection, was my least favorite, until I realized that Munro based it on a real woman’s life. I think that with all of the stories I felt like she kept everything loose, not giving extreme detail that would not work in the form, but gave enough to feel a sense of understanding and completion. I’ll pick up more of hers at some point – she’s deserving of all the praise.
+10 Task
+10 Combo (10.9, 20.9)
+10 Review
Task Total: 30
Grand Total: 1000
20.8 Exiles and EmmigrantsMax Overacts, Vol 1: Hold on to Your Stubs by Caanan Grail
+20 Task
Graphic Novel – no styles
Task Total: 20 (Australian, lives in Canada: http://occasionalcomics.com/bio/)
Grand Total: 970
20.6 JewishWhen Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr (Lexile 940)
Review: When I was a kid, I read every children’s/YA book on the Holocaust I could get my hands on. I also used to read random books from when my mom was a kid. This reminded me of the writing style from my mom’s books, and lacked some of the tension of the Holocaust books I read, but was a cute story nevertheless. Kerr wrote it, and the two sequels, as a fictionalized account of her own experience. I don’t know what is true and what is not, but it seems as though her family didn’t suffer as drastic a fate as many Jewish families in Hitler’s Germany – they got out right before he was elected and left France before the war started – so I’m actually interested in the second book in the series, which deals with their life in London during the Blitz. Maybe the tension I was missing will be present in that one, especially since Anna, the main character, will be older.
+20 Task (shelved 10 times as Jewish)
+10 Review
+5 Oldies (published 1971)
+10 Combo (20.8 – born in Germany, settled in England; 20.9 – born in 1923 and still alive)
Task Total: 45
Grand Total: 950
10.4 Sovereign StatesTrial by Desire by Courtney Milan
Review: I predict that by the end of this season I will have read all of Courtney Milan’s books to date – I just can’t seem to stop. This is the second in her first series, and it’s maybe my least favorite of hers to date, but it’s still better than most historical romances I read. Kate and Ned were in the first book, and to a large extent I liked them better there. They married after being caught in a compromising position, and then Ned left for China. This book picks up three years later, when Ned comes back. It was interesting to see how he dealt with what we would now call manic-depression but was then not able to be diagnosed, but was at the same time rather frustrating. This book shares a theme with most of Milan’s other works – the characters have more modern views about certain things than I expect they really would have – but that remains what I like most about Milan’s books. Having read her most recent contemporary novel, I’m not sure which I prefer, but I’ll keep reading her as long as she produces books.
+10 Task (set entirely in England)
+10 Review
Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 905
10.4 Sovereign StatesMe Before You by Jojo Moyes
Review: I’m not a crier, as a rule, and when I do it’s usually at happy things (when people win reality TV shows, for some reason, always brings a tear to my eye), but this book – oh, this book. For some reason I had it marked on my shelf as a romance novel, which it really isn’t – but it is a beautiful story, and a bit of a love story as well. Will is at the top of the world, until he decides to be safe and not take his motorcycle on a bad weather day and, ironically, gets hit by a motorcycle. Lou hasn’t thought much about what to do with her life, so when she loses her job, she’ll pretty much take anything. She becomes a personal care companion for Will, and a friendship forms. The story is mostly about the characters, and it’s not perfect, but I wish more pieces of media would address difficult subjects in the way this does. Moyes doesn’t gloss over the difficult parts of this story – it’s pretty much all difficult – but she tells it with sweetness and humor and even a whimsy that’s often lacking in realistic fiction. I had tears streaming down my face for the last few chapters of the book, and wouldn’t have it any other way.
+10 Task (set entirely in the UK except parts of the last 2 chapters)
+10 Review
Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 885
10.1 Square PegTrade Me by Courtney Milan
Review: I had another book slated for my square peg, but when I started to see review after review pop up on Goodreads, blogs, and podcasts, I had to get in on the action. This is the first ‘New Adult’ contemporary romance written by one of my favorite historical romance authors, and while it was a shift in tone, the basic reasons I love her books stood out in this one. In fact, I think some of the things I like best about her books involve the… progressive… thinking of most of her characters, which can feel anachronistic in a historical setting. Here, she has room to shine, tackling all kinds of issues, but poverty most head-on. I heard an interview in which she said she’d been dared to write a billionaire book and she said she’d never do it unless she could make fun of the billionaire the whole time, and this is the result, but really the billionaire isn’t being laughed at at all – not really. While I question the need for a separate ‘New Adult’ category for (mostly) romances featuring twenty-something protagonists, I have to say I kind of love the trend. Most historical romances have one or both leads in their teens or twenties anyway, so it’s not a stretch. Plus, I fell in love in college, so these stories, angsty as they might sometimes end up, work for me the way others never will.
+10 Task
+10 Review
Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 865
10.7 Black HumorThe Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
+10 Task (#66 on list)
600 Lexile – no styles
Task Total: 10
Grand Total: 845
20.1 Published 1906-1951I Will Repay by Emmuska Orczy
Review: The Scarlet Pimpernel is one of my favorite characters, so in spite of Orczy’s outdated views – her writing exhibits Anti-Semitism, classism, and sexism that may have been appropriate for the time in which she wrote, but that frustrate me as a modern progressive – I keep reading her books when I can find them. I Will Repay only has Sir Percy as a side character, and the story is relatively overwrought, but I still had a great time reading it. Juliette, the heroine, made an oath as a child to avenge her brother’s death, but she ends up falling in love with the man she’s supposed to hate. The backdrop of the French Revolution is always interesting, if presented in a one-sided manner. It’s worth the read if you’re a fan and willing to overlook Orczy’s style and views.
+20 Task (published 1906)
+10 Review
+10 Oldies
+10 Combo (20.8, 20.9)
Task Total: 50
Grand Total: 835
Coralie wrote: "10.10 Group Reads :Moloka'i by Alan Brennert
+10 task
+5 combo (20.10 thanks Cory)
Task total: 15
Grand Total: 880"
;) You're welcome!
