Cory Day’s
Comments
(group member since Aug 18, 2012)
Cory Day’s
comments
from the Reading with Style group.
Showing 121-140 of 1,205
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Ahh, Cory. I wondered what happened to you. I hope you can find a way to participate for Winter, even if on a part time basis."I'm still here!!
I'd have quit the other challenge long ago, but since it's a team one I would've let them all down.
I might just pop in starting in January once it's all over and see what books I've read fit into the categories and go from there!
I admire all of you who do multiple challenges - my fall just went to pieces since I was trying to keep up with a team challenge that required at least 10 books a month, and since they're a very specific genre, I couldn't get them all to overlap with this challenge. I just kind of gave up posting here :(. I may take the winter off too, since that challenge has one month left, but the tasks might just pull me back in ;)
20.8 J.D. SalingerBear, Otter, and the Kid by T.J. Klune
Review: Some of the reviews for this book give it low ratings because it is apparently similar to a movie and they basically claim it’s plagiarized. Not having seen the movie, I have no idea if it’s true, although in a perverse way I guess I feel like all it does is make me want to see the movie. That aside, I really enjoyed this book, despite its not so great cover and strange title. It is much less fluffy than those things would suggest. Bear’s mother leaves him in charge of his little brother just a few days before his eighteenth birthday and his high school graduation, and the book is mostly set a few years later. He’s dating the girl he’s been off and on with since high school when his best friend’s brother (Otter) returns to town, and things get shaken up. I got really frustrated toward the end of the book when things started going sideways, and I wonder if the issue is further explored in the later books, since I have my theories about some of it. I’ll definitely pick up the next one someday.
+20 Task
+5 Combo (10.9)
+10 Review
Task Total: 35
Grand Total: 545
10.9 Next?Crossroads by Riley Hart
Review: This was pretty much the ultimate in gay-for-you romance. Two men move into either side of a duplex, form a friendship, and start spending all their time together. When Bryce’s brother asks him about his relationship with Nick, he realizes he’s attracted to his new friend and they start exploring from there. It moves pretty quickly – the relationship, especially from Bryce’s side, is basically shown as fate or something like it. They deal with discrimination, mostly from Nick’s mother, but seem to get over it. I think the book takes place over a few months, and by the end they’re in love and living together. It was fluffy, pretty much unbelievable, and sort of silly, but also kind of comforting. My biggest complaint was that some of the writing was just a little stilted in a way I can’t exactly describe, but it was pretty fun to read anyway.
+10 Task
+10 Review
Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 510
10.9 Next?Collide by Riley Hart
Review: I really liked this book, in spite of some concerns I had going into it. For one thing, Cooper is a firefighter and has nightmares about the house fire that killed his parents. I’m afraid of fire, so that stuff can really mess with me, but it’s kind of all off page in this one. For another thing, I’m not always okay with the gay for you trope, but I was willing to go with it on this one. I do wish that had been a little more explored, and the ultimate reckoning with Cooper’s aunt and uncle was undermined by other drama, but overall the romance was cute and the book got into just enough depth to be interesting.
+10 Task
+10 Review
Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 475
10.9 Next?Playing to Win by Avery Cockburn
Review: I love this series so very very much. Playing to Win picks up pretty much literally at the end of Playing for Keeps, but features Colin and Andrew, both side characters in the previous ones. Lord Andrew is a member of the aristocracy and twitter celebrity, and Colin has grown up on government benefits. Set in the middle of the Scottish referendum for independence, the book focuses very soundly on class and titles in the UK, and goes well beyond the typical minor setbacks that keep people apart. These two really shouldn’t be able to work it out, but they’re drawn to each other and learn from each other. I kept forgetting these guys are supposed to be 19 and 20 years old – they almost seemed like they could be in their early 30s.
+10 Task
+10 Review
Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 455
10.9 Next?Baked Fresh by Annabeth Albert
Review: I read the first in this series a while ago, but there was very minimal connection between the books. This one has a focus on a couple of things – Vic is dealing with having lost a lot of weight, both in the insecurities with his body and also with the reasons behind his getting surgery – and Robin is a recovering addict. They’re both all kinds of screwed up, and their relationship has a weird start, but they’re very sweet together by the end. I also liked the baking aspects – I’m a baker myself, albeit an amateur one – and wish there were pictures of some of the cakes Vic designed.
+10 Task
+10 Review
Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 435
20.6 John Buchan (journalist)Traitor's Moon by Lynn Flewelling
Review: Traitor’s Moon is the third book in this series, and it looks as though the later books aren’t as beloved as the original trilogy, so I stopped my binge reading for the time being. It picks up years after its predecessor and I wish some of that period had been shown – we just find that Alec and Seregil have deepened their relationship to a supernatural level and they’ve kind of hid from the world. They make their way out in this one, ending up in Seregil’s homeland, from which he’s been exiled for decades. It’s an interesting investigation into how that exile impacted his life, but parts are kind of boring. I like this series best when they’re getting up to their shenanigans.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Jumbo (540 pages)
+10 Combo (10.4, 10.9)
Task Total: 45
Grand Total: 415
20.6 John Buchan (journalist)Openly Straight by Bill Konigsberg
+10 Task
Lexile 680 – no styles
Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 370
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "'tis the season.I saw a package for apple cider cupcake mix today."
I saw a Christmas commercial earlier this week!!!
10.8 PTSD: Coralie's TaskSimon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
+10 Task
Lexile 680 – no styles
Task Total: 10
Grand Total: 350
15.1 HaHPlaying for Keeps by Avery Cockburn (female: https://www.facebook.com/avery.cockbu...)
+15 Task
Task Total: 15
Grand Total: 325
20.9 Edgar Allen PoeDevil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley
Review: Devil in a Blue Dress is the first in the Easy Rawlins mystery series. I picked it up because Mosley is going to be at an event I’m going to in November, and I’m attempting (without much success) to read a book from each author who will be present there. The mystery itself wasn’t the book’s strength. Instead, Easy as a character shines through – I feel like he’s maybe my friend. He hasn’t had an easy life, in spite of his name – as a black man in 1948 Los Angeles, he’s running into the same things that still make the news today. He’s discriminated against when he tries to hold down a job. He’s harassed by the police. He’s afraid of losing his home, so he makes some questionable decisions. In the end, Easy finds his way out of the trouble and is on his way to being a landlord and private investigator, which I presume helps set up the remainder of the series. If I’m looking to visit a friend, I’ll probably pick up the next in the series someday.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+10 Combo (10.4, 10.9)
+5 Oldies (pub 1990)
Task Total: 45
Grand Total: 310
20.8 J.D. SalingerMy Fair Captain by J.L. Langley
Review: It’s not entirely clear on the surface whether this book takes itself seriously or not. It reads a lot like an old regency romance “bodice ripper” but with young men being the virginal heroes rather than girls. I chose to read it as much more tongue in cheek, as making fun of those tropes and just playing around with the idea. Aiden is a prince in a world where women have been almost entirely eliminated and same sex relationships are the expected norm. Nate comes from a different land, where homosexuality isn’t as accepted. It’s all this crazy mixture of science fiction and Regency romance, and it makes basically no sense. They get married a little less than halfway through the book and it’s all kind of abrupt, much like old school romance novels. Once the sex started almost all communication and emotion was basically not present, but that’s okay – I still had fun with it.
+20 task
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.9)
Task Total: 35
Grand Total: 265
20.6 John Buchan (journalist)Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewelling
Review: A friend of mine had been recommending these books to me for months, and I finally picked up Luck in the Shadows at the beginning of September, worried that it was going to be like some other epic fantasy books and would really drag. My worries were unfounded - I tore through this one and immediately picked up the next two books in the series. Alec is a teenager who ends up being rescued and then basically apprenticed to Seregil, who’s of a different, much more long-lived race. It’s not a big factor in this book, but since Alec is 16 and Seregil is in his 50s, the book begins asserting that Seregil matures much slower than Alec as a setup for later romantic involvement between the characters. I read the book because it featured a male-male relationship, but really that’s not the main focus of any of the three I’ve read, and I was much more satisfied when I just kind of read along with their hijinks rather than focusing on the romance.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+10 Combo (10.4, 10.9)
Task Total: 40
Grand Total: 230
20.3 PoetsThe Poems Of Wilfred Owen by Wilfred Owen
Review: Every time I read a book of poetry I struggle with it to one extent or another. This book was no exception – I found myself drawn to the biography of the author at the beginning of the book and a scrap of writing Owen himself wrote that was meant to be a forward to an eventual published book of poetry more than to the poems themselves. In particular, his earlier poems – those written before WWI – didn’t resonate much at all. Still, having read about Wilfred Owen and his contemporaries before, it was good to read his poetry. I marked a few poems as striking, and his feelings about war definitely made themselves known and latched themselves into my heart a little.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+10 Oldies (pub 1921)
+15 Combo (10.8, 20.1, 20.5 – born 1893)
Task Total: 55
Grand Total: 190
20.1 VeteransThe Legend of the Apache Kid by Sarah Black
Review: This was such an odd book. It’s short, and might be considered somehow experimental I guess, but if that’s the case it didn’t work, at least on me. Raine is an English professor, and within the first few pages he uses improper grammar that annoyed me so much that it pulled me out of the story for the entire read. I was also bothered by the fact that Raine, a full-grown man, called his father Daddy. I’m sure there are some people who do that, but it was incredibly distracting, especially since the book ended up exploring fathers and sons (both by blood and not) and that got a little tied up into the romance in a way that just kind of confused me. Some of the reviews give Sarah Black a lot of credit for being smart and interesting, so maybe it’s just not my cup of tea, but I’m not sure I’ll be trying another of hers.
+20 Task (approved in help thread)
+10 Review
Task Total: 30
Grand Total: 135
10.9 Next?Empty Net by Avon Gale
Review: This is the fourth in a series of hockey romances I’d never even heard of, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I ended up really liking the book, despite a few quibbles. It’s really less a sports romance than the story of a man recovering from a lifetime of emotional and physical abuse, and the romance is only a portion of what helps him figure his life out. I do think Laurent had so many problems that the author wasn’t really able to thoroughly address all of them, but Isaac did what he needed to do to get through to him. I didn’t get the impression by the end of the book that the process was over, which is good since that kind of thing isn’t something that is gotten over in a year or so. I’m intrigued and will probably go back and read the others at some point.
+10 Task
+10 Review
Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 105
