Bucket’s Comments (group member since Feb 13, 2015)

Bucket’s comments from the Reading with Style group.

20.6 The Color Purple

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

Review: This is a fascinating character-driven narrative that is deftly written. Not only are the characters fantastic, but the structure is so well done. The story mostly takes place when the girls of the "Brodie set" are students, but there are extremely well-timed moments and hints about their futures that give us a foreboding sense of the darkness that will eventually become all too clear in Jean Brodie's unusual teaching style.

I was intrigued by the girls' ever-evolving understanding of what it means to be "in your prime." Spark also does an excellent job making the reader respect Brodie at first, then slowly destroying that feeling. In some ways, we experience the predator/prey relationship along with the girls.

+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Oldies (pub 1961)
+5 Combo (20.9 – “And she made him eat a Chester cake, and spoke to him in a slightly more Edinburgh way than usual, so as to make up to him by both means for the love she was giving to Teddy Lloyd instead of to him.”)

Post total: 40
Season total: 205

Claimed to date:
- 10.2 - 10.4(x2) - - - - - -
- - - 15.4 - - - - - -
20.1 - - - - 20.6 - - - -

10.4 Name

Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos

Review: Dos Passos does something unique here with the style. He's telling the story of New York city in the 1910s and 1920s and it feels at first like he's focusing on several different characters and moving between their stories. He sort of is. But as the book continues, it becomes clear that New York City is the main character and the others are just vehicles. Often the prose moves rapidly between perspectives, scenes, and times, in ways that do detriment to characterization but really illuminate the feeling of living in NYC at the time.

I enjoyed this style for style's sake, in an intellectual way. But it definitely puts a wall between me as the reader and the characters in the book which made it a less fun reading experience for me. Definitely an interesting and worthy read, just not my new favorite.

+10 Task
+10 Review
+10 Oldies (pub 1925)

Post total: 30
Season total: 165

Claimed to date:
- 10.2 - 10.4(x2) - - - - - -
- - - 15.4 - - - - - -
20.1 - - - - - - - - -

20.1 Pulitzer

Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne

Review: Jules Verne is fun reading, as long as I go in expecting fluff and nothing serious. There’s little in the way of character development and the plot points are more full of minutiae than intrigue. The race and gender tropes and stereotypes are often on full display, though this one was better than, for instance, Around the World in Eighty Days, since there are very few secondary characters.

I also enjoyed the detail-focused style here more, since it’s a very much invented landscape. No one had (or has) been to the center of the earth and it’s not really possible to do, so Verne had more freedom to invent than he did in Around the World in Eighty Days.

+20 Task
+10 Review
+15 Oldies (pub 1864)
+5 Combo (10.4)

Post total: 50
Season total: 130

Claimed to date:
- 10.2 - 10.4 - - - - - -
- - - 15.4 - - - - - -
20.1 - - - - - - - - -

I'm thinking about reading something by Gertrude Stein.

"Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and made France her home for the remainder of her life." (Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrud...)

15.4 Eastern Africa

I Didn't Do It for You: How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation by Michela Wrong

Review: This is an engaging and well-researched history by Michela Wrong, a reporter with a true passion for her subject. Wrong puts three things together in this book to give us a very clear picture of Eritrea. First, detailed research of Eritrean history. Second, her own first-person interviews with Eritreans, both still in the country and among the diaspora. And finally, her on the ground perspective from reporting in Eritrea.

The book is very readable, much more than I expected. It puts us on the ground there, over the course of many decades, with vivid and colorful details to keep us engaged.

+15 Task
+10 Review
+20 Project Bonus (Eritrea)

Post total: 45
Season total: 75

Claimed to date:
- 10.2 - 10.4 - - - - - -
- - - 15.4 - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -

10.4 Name

The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster

Review: Burying myself in an experiment that works is my favorite type of reading experience. So I absolutely loved this trilogy.

These three stories are very similar in tone, theme and characterization. They have layers upon layers upon layers. They are unsolved mysteries that left me feeling like I understand and don’t understand at once.

All three stories deal with double identities (and sometimes the doubling of double identities) and the way identity shifts and changes through name changes, disguises, life decisions, life indecisions, etc. Names, roles and props repeat in multiple stories, allowing them to shed light on each. The third (The Locked Room) is the best of the three, but it would be nowhere near as good without having read the other two stories first.

+10 Task
+10 Review

Post total: 20
Season total: 30

Claimed to date:
- 10.2 - 10.4 - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -

10.2 Easter

The Eternal Smile: Three Stories by Gene Luen Yang

+10 Task
(This is a graphic novel, so no styles)

Post total: 10
Season total: 10

Claimed to date:
- 10.2 - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -

15.5 CiV 10

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells (192 pages, pub’d 1897)

+35 Task V-W-X-Y-Z, 181-220 / 581-620, 1888-1902

Post total: 35
Season total: 415

Claimed to date:
10.1(2x) - - 10.4 10.5 10.6(3x) 10.7(2x) 10.8 10.9(2x) -
15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 15.5 - - - - -
- - - - - - - 20.8 - -

20.8 Dead Sea

Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño

+20 Task (initials RB)
+10 Lost in Translation (translated from the Spanish)
+5 Combo (10.6 – time)

Post total: 35
Season total: 380

Claimed to date:
10.1(2x) - - 10.4 10.5 10.6(3x) 10.7(2x) 10.8 10.9(2x) -
15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 - - - - - -
- - - - - - - 20.8 - -

15.4 CiV 10

Death and the Dervish by Meša Selimović (473 pages, pub’d 1966)

+30 Task S-T-U, 461-500861-900, 1963-1977

Post total: 30
Season total: 345

Claimed to date:
10.1(2x) - - 10.4 10.5 10.6(3x) 10.7(2x) 10.8 10.9(2x) -
15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -

10.8 Singles

Lowboy by John Wray

+10 Task

Post total: 10
Season total: 315

Claimed to date:
10.1(2x) - - 10.4 10.5 10.6(3x) 10.7(2x) 10.8 10.9(2x) -
15.1 15.2 15.3 - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -

15.3 CiV 10

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (308 pages, pub’d 2018)

+25 Task I-J-K, 301-340/701-740, 2008-2022

Post total: 25
Season total: 305

Claimed to date:
10.1(2x) - - 10.4 10.5 10.6(3x) 10.7(2x) – 10.9(2x) -
15.1 15.2 15.3 - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -

10.6 NYE Countdown

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (Word: TIME)

+10 Task

Post total: 10
Season total: 280

Claimed to date:
10.1(2x) - - 10.4 10.5 10.6(3x) 10.7(2x) – 10.9(2x) -
15.1 15.2 - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -

10.9 Discovery

Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson
(Non-fiction book informing my personal and professional anti-racism work)

+10 Task
+5 Combo (10.6 – Word: WATCH)

Post total: 15
Season total: 270

Claimed to date:
10.1(2x) - - 10.4 10.5 10.6(2x) 10.7(2x) – 10.9(2x) -
15.1 15.2 - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -

10.9 Discovery

I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown
(Non-fiction book informing my personal and professional anti-racism work)

+10 Task
+5 Combo (10.6 – Word: TIME)

Post total: 15
Season total: 255

Claimed to date:
10.1(2x) - - 10.4 10.5 10.6(2x) 10.7(2x) – 10.9 -
15.1 15.2 - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -

10.7 Genre-Rich

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (Genres: Historical, Mystery)

+10 Task
+10 Canon
+15 Jumbo (859 pages)
+5 Combo (10.6 – Word: TIME)

Post total: 40
Season total: 240

Claimed to date:
10.1(2x) - - 10.4 10.5 10.6(2x) 10.7(2x) - - -
15.1 15.2 - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -

10.4 Vocation

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (much of the novel takes place in the labyrinthine and mysterious monastic library)

+10 Task
+10 Lost in Translation (from the Italian)
+10 Aged
+5 Jumbo (536 pages)
+5 Combo (10.7 – Historical, cultural, mystery)

Post total: 40
Season total: 195

Claimed to date:
10.1(2x) - - 10.4 10.5 10.6(2x) 10.7 - - -
15.1 15.2 - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -

10.1 List Lovers

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger (List: 1001 books)

+10 Task
+10 Aged

Post total: 20
Season total: 155

Claimed to date:
10.1(2x) - - - 10.5 10.6(2x) 10.7 - - -
15.1 15.2 - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -

10.7 Genre-Rich

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

+10 Task (MPGs Historical and Cultural)
+10 Aged

Post total: 20
Season total: 140

Claimed to date:
10.1 - - - 10.5 10.6 10.7 10.8 - -
15.1 15.2 - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -

10.6 NYE Countdown

Time's Arrow by Martin Amis

+10 Task
+10 Combo (20.4 – MPG Thriller; 20.8 – Author initials MA in QUMRAN)

Post total: 20
Season total: 120

Claimed to date:
10.1 - - - 10.5 10.6 - 10.8 - -
15.1 15.2 - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - -