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

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

TtPR – Seafarer

15.10 (tenth stop): Russia
Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

+15 Task
+10 Bonus

Task Total: 25
“Well Traveled” Bonus: 100
Grand Total: 1180

TtPR – Seafarer

15.9 (ninth stop): Japan
The Devotion of Suspect X: A Detective Galileo Novel by Keigo Higashino (born in Japan, Japanese, set in Japan)

+15 Task
+10 Bonus

Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 1055

10.6 Beginnings/Endings

The Scribe by Elizabeth Hunter

Review: I really enjoyed this slightly different from usual paranormal romance/urban fantasy book. It had its less perfect moments, such as throw away cultural references that will seem dated in a few years and a very abrupt movement from just knowing someone to love, but all in all it was fun and refreshing. Set in Turkey, it follows a woman who has heard mysterious voices all her life and a part-angel ‘Irim scribe’, who turn out to be destined for each other. Ava’s condition was a unique take on telepathy – unlike Sookie Stackhouse, she can’t hear even close to complete thoughts, since the voices are in a language she doesn’t understand and cannot find any mention of. In the course of this book, Ava finds out some things about herself and her gift, although the ending left quite a few unanswered questions. I’ll have to wait for the next one to hopefully find out the answers with her.

+10 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.5)

Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 1030

20.7 Group Reads Redux

Bossypants by Tina Fey

Review: When this book came out it seemed like everyone and their mother was reading it, but I never felt the need to add it to my to-read list. When I got a copy for free a few months ago, I added it to the pile, but it wasn’t until it matched up with this task that I decided to pick it up. I’ve been on vacation this weekend and it was perfect for the occasion – fun and funny and light but not shallow. I don’t follow Fey’s work that closely, but she is funny and I admire her for being straight forward and down to earth, and all of that shines in this book. I do think the audiobook would be even more fun – it’s written in a non-linear stream-of-consciousness type style that I expect would work better with her voice speaking the words. My favorite part was the chapter when she went on a cruise for her honeymoon – aside from the engine room fire, it perfectly reflected my experiences on my first (maybe last) cruise.

+20 Task
+5 Combo (10.6)
+10 Review
+10 Not-a-Novel

Task Total: 45
Grand Total: 1005

20.6 20th C

Watchmen by Alan Moore

+20 Task (#115)
Graphic Novel – no style

Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 960

10.5 Goodreads Author

Agave Kiss by Ann Aguirre

Review: I love Ann Aguirre’s books, to the point that I’ve been saving this one for a while. It’s the conclusion of her Corine Solomon series, and there is really no way I could see someone reading this installment without reading the others. It’s urban fantasy, but without the leather-clad protagonist, and with no vampires or werewolves. Aguirre’s characters go through hell (sometimes literally) and they don’t all get happy endings tied up with a bow, but there’s enough humor, love, and hope mixed in with the crazy that it’s all worth it. She didn’t make me cry this time, but it was a satisfying conclusion to the series. I also appreciate that her series come to a natural conclusion – she doesn’t drag them out like some do. I’m sad to see the characters go, but she’s always writing new series for me to inhale.

+10 Task
+10 Review

Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 940

TtPR – Seafarer

15.8 (eighth stop): China
Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong

+15 Task
+10 Bonus

Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 920

10.5 Goodreads Author

Chasing Magic by Stacia Kane

Review: This is the fifth book in a series, so I wouldn’t start here, but it’s definitely one of my favorite urban fantasy series out there. Chess lives in a world without religion, or perhaps with one religion; after a day when all the dead rose up to haunt the living, The Church emerged as the authority on ghosts and magic and the only dependable source of Truth (although I think someday Chess will realize that’s not quite the whole story). She’s broken – having been abused as a child, she took to heart the abusers’ message that she was worthless and horrible. That path has led to her becoming a drug addict, and she isn’t trying to stop using, even overdosing in this installment. Some of her relationships are taking steps forward, but others are moving backwards. She does manage to save her neighborhood from an evil sorcerer though, and I expect at some point she’ll get herself together as well.

+10 Task
+10 Review

Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 895

20.8 Disasters

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan

Review: This was my favorite type of non-fiction book. It was easy to read yet totally informative. It told the stories of the people, and through them also told the stories of the land. It was long enough to give some backstory of how the Dust Bowl came to be and also to move through the 1930’s. I cannot imagine living in the parts of Oklahoma, Texas, etc. the book focused on, either before or after the dust storms wiped the towns there almost entirely out of existence. I really thought the descriptions of life before the Great Depression sounded like life couldn’t get much more difficult – I mean, I’m surprised I didn’t have nightmares about walls crawling with centipedes – but then the dust storms came and covered the region. The only issue I had with the book is that I wish Egan had discussed a little more about what happened to the people and towns after the Depression ended during the conclusion; instead, he threaded that part through the narrative in a way that I felt didn’t give me personally the full picture. Still a great book, and not nearly as dry (ha) or intimidating as I thought it’d be.

+20 Task (dust storms)
+10 Not-a-Novel (non-fiction)
+10 Review

Task Total: 40
Grand Total: 875

20.2 Picaresque

Waverley by Walter Scott

Review: I had high hopes for this book, which is supposedly one of the first examples of historical fiction. It’s also set in Scotland during the Jacobite revolution, which has fascinated me since reading Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series. Sadly, I was disappointed. The book started out slow but strong, where Scott introduces the main character and his upbringing. There were asides by the author that were mostly funny or interesting. Unfortunately, that tendency began to grate on me and become annoying more often than not, and the story never really got off the ground but just felt like background. The characters fell flat, the plot never got interesting, and it took forever to finish. I guess maybe that’s the point of a picaresque novel, but it didn’t connect with me.

+20 Task
+10 Review
+15 Oldies (pub. 1814)

Task Total: 45
Grand Total: 835

20.1 1964

Mine Till Midnight by Lisa Kleypas

Review: This is a serviceable but fairly forgettable historical romance – a perfect palate cleanser, but nothing to write home about. The premise is that a family has received an unexpected inheritance, and along with it a title that puts them in a different place in society than they had previously occupied. Part of the family is a man who was rescued by them when he was a kid, and he’s Roma. Coincidentally, the female lead meets a dashing part Roma man and, of course, they fall in love. Because she’s a particularly open-minded person and a man she thinks of as a brother is also Roma, she doesn’t have the preconception of “gypsies” the rest of society would have. Is it true to history? Probably not. Were there some questionable gender role and dominance issues? Maybe. Was there even a thrown in silly ghost thing at the end? Yes. But was it a fun read for a day? Also yes.

+20 Task (Kleypas born in 1964: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Kle...)
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.5)

Task Total: 35
Grand Total: 790

20.3 Post-Colonial

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

Review: The English Patient follows a group of characters living in a home in Italy at the end of World War II, shifting perspectives and time to chronicle the events that led them there. It centers around an anonymous man with hideous wounds and his nurse Hana. I had a hard time following the story for a good third of the novel – I could not figure out whose perspective I was reading, since Ondaatje used a lot of pronouns and not so many names. Eventually though, either I got used to it or he identified the characters better. Either way, once I got settled the story was interesting, although one thread interested me the most and once it was tied up the rest of the book fell a little flat. Maybe someday I’ll catch the movie.

+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo (20.6)

Task Total: 35
Grand Total: 755

There are a ton of Science Fiction and Fantasy awards, and in my recollection tend to do a lot of overlapping in the shortlists. The Locus awards are, I believe, basically open for anyone to vote. The Hugo votes are open to anyone who pays to attend a convention. The Nebulas I think are open for a certain group to vote, and I think most of those people are authors. The World Fantasy Awards use a committee. There are often certain books that appear on more than one list, so any of them would probably give a good range. I'm pretty sure I personally tend to like the World Fantasy Awards and the Nebulas best.

Then there are more specific ones... I like the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, which explores gender understanding. Or ones for specific countries, like the Aurealis Awards and Ditmar Awards for Australia (I think I like the Ditmars better, and they're older).

Those are what I'm most familiar with - I listen to a lot of science fiction and fantasy book podcasts, and a good percentage are from Australia. Some of the other awards that came to mind turned out to be relatively new so there wasn't a lot of 'meat' there yet.

Have you ever done the Goodreads Choice Awards? I know they're not prestigious or anything, but there are a bunch of genres represented.

10.10 Group Reads

Scenes from Village Life by Amos Oz

Review: Short stories in general are a struggle for me – I like to settle in with stories and characters, which is difficult to do with so few words. This collection left me in a strange way both satisfied and unsatisfied on that account. Because the stories are interconnected, I felt like I was settling in with the small Israeli town. However, the stories truly are scenes – most of them end with an ambiguity that left me waiting for the second act. It was like I visited the town and heard a series of phone calls, but the people walked away before hearing what happened. This wasn’t the ambiguity of life, acknowledging the uncertainty that comes with people and relationship. These were stories that HAD endings – a woman waiting for her nephew would either find him, or find out he was missing, or something; a man left in a cellar would either stay there and die or wake up and leave. In the end, I appreciated the book but am not in a hurry to jump back into another similar collection.

+10 Task
+10 Review
+10 Not-a-Novel (short stories)

Task Total: 30
Grand Total: 720

10.4 Chinese New Year

Tea with the Black Dragon by R.A. MacAvoy

Review: I’ve had this book on my to-read shelf for a while, and bought used at some point since my library didn’t have it. The modern urban fantasy genre didn’t really exist when this was written in 1983, but I’d put it loosely in there anyway. Set in contemporary San Francisco, the story follows 50-year-old Martha and Mr. Long, a man (dragon!) she meets on her first day in the city. Martha’s daughter is involved in some nasty business, and Martha and Mr. Long get sucked into it. The fantastical elements are not very explicit and remain largely under the surface, almost incidental to the plot, so the book reads more like a mystery than a fantasy novel. I only wish it had been longer – at less than 200 pages, there were parts of the plot that could have been more flushed out.

+10 Task
+10 Review
+5 Oldies (pub. 1983)

Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 690

10.2 Fantasy

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones (Lexile 800)

Review: My friend’s sons’ favorite movie in the whole world was based on this book, and that’s about all I knew about it going in. She maintains the movie is better than the book, so after enjoying this I put a hold on the DVD at the library. The book is a fun fantasy, although not an entirely light one. It has the feel of a kind of fairy tale – three sisters are sent to be apprentices in different places when their dad dies, a wicked witch puts a curse on the eldest, and some happily ever after action – but has little quirky bits that ground it almost in the real world. In the end, though, Howl IS a wizard, so it’s got a ton of magic. I do wish some of the side characters had been a little more fleshed out, since the glimpses of them we got were interesting. There is a sequel, but the description makes it sound like one set in the same world, not with the same characters.

+10 Task (shelved as fantasy 4,793 times)
+10 Review
+5 Oldies (pub 1986)

Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 665

TtPR – Seafarer

15.7 (seventh stop): Philippines
Salamanca by Dean Francis Alfar (born in Philippines, Filipino, set in Philippines)

+15 Task
+10 Bonus

Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 640

10.8 BINGO

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

Review: This is the perfect kind of book for me – a great mixture of more “literary” qualities with characters and plot that keep me moving through the story. Brooks is an author that I will always read more of, although I still have some backlist to cover. This particular book is set in a small town in England during a bubonic plague outbreak, but in the 1660s, not the 1300s. Of course, in order to double check my years I looked up bubonic plague – something I suggest you not do unless you want to see an article from today warning of the potential of a new strain’s attacking the world without warning, or the Wikipedia article complete with pictures. The descriptions are disgusting at times – the plague was pretty disgusting – but the story is really more about a town that has shut itself off from the world and is watching itself die. The one quibble I had was with the ending, which was just a little… strange.

+10 Task
+10 Review

Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 615

TtPR – Seafarer

15.6 (sixth stop): Australia
Darkness Devours by Keri Arthur (Born in Australia, Australian, set in Australia)

+15 Task
+10 Bonus

Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 595

10.5 Goodreads Author

The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two by Catherynne M. Valente (Lexile 950)

Review: When I finished the first book in this series, I hugged it. When I finished the second, I wasn’t as thrilled, but definitely smiled. Sadly, this third one disappointed me. The first half of it plodded along with little glimmers of the fun of the first two books.

September is on the precipice of young adulthood, having just turned thirteen. The book opens in Nebraska, where she is worried she’s growing too old to travel back to Fairyland as she was promised. When she basically forces her way in, her adventures don’t take off the way they have in the past. She isn’t welcomed in, she doesn’t immediately have a task, and despite her feeling more grown up, she’s not comfortable in that role.

There is whimsy in these books – the language is playful, yet not light – and I expect this book is more awkward because September is at an awkward stage in life. Unfortunately, I think I want her to stay a child forever, or else maybe grow up more quickly! Hopefully the next one will be a little more satisfying.

+10 Task
+10 Review

Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 570