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

Bucket’s comments from the Reading with Style group.

20.9 I Bless the Rains Down in Africa

Singing Away the Hunger: The Autobiography of an African Woman by Mpho M'Atsepo Nthunya

Review: A quick read, and worth the time to see the world through someone else's eyes.This is the story of Mpho’s life in Lesotho, starting with a bit of her mother’s story and continuing up through when she’s telling the story as a grandmother. Mpho speaks 8 languages and is matriarch of a large family she loves deeply.

I appreciated that the story is Mpho's voice and story based on her memories alone, without heavy editing or clarification. I don't have the historical and political context to truly understand Mpho's story, but that's okay because the point here is her world view and her life. And she's a great storyteller.

+20 Task (born and lived in Lesotho)
+5 Bonus (I think this turns Lesotho green!)
+10 Review
+10 Not a novel (auto-bio)
+5 Oldies (pub’d 1996)
+5 Combo (10.1 - Mpho travels on foot between her mother’s house and her husband’s house repeatedly and it’s more than a day’s walk)

Task total =55
Season total = 465

20.2 Carbon Removal

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Review: These are connected short stories. Several of the stories are from Olive's point of view and she features as a character in every single one. The stories that aren't Olive-centered center on the lives of other townspeople in Crosby, Maine. The book is entirely chronological, beginning in the 1970s and ending in 2000-something. Throughout the book, we get a picture of Olive as a person - she is large, self-conscious, adamant, unforgiving, quick to judge, and also very intuitive about when others are having problems, loving in her own way, and willing to help people. We also get a picture of her influence on people in the small town as a math teacher and a lifelong community member.

Olive is a complex, well-drawn character. She has extremely large flaws - including anger and cruelty and an inability to either compromise or apologize, but she is also sensitive and kind and loving in the only way she knows how. I like her, and I think this has a lot to do with being able to see her from so many different characters' perspectives. Olive has a lot of regret, and this makes for interesting reading and is very thought-provoking as far as how I want to be as a person in my own life. Olive is unable to see her mistakes as such, but she feels them and is affected by them.

Strout is a master at creating characters. Not only Olive, but even the characters we see for just one story are real and complex. They are confused and often without hope, but they are also struggling in ways that make this, in the end, a hopeful book. I like that Strout seems to build her characters and then see what happens with them.

+20 Task (Pulitzer, Premio Bancarella)
+10 Review
+10 Not a novel
+10 Combo (20.1 - TV miniseries; 20.8 - many characters drink beer throughout the stories, including Henry Kitteridge)

Task total =50
Season total = 410

10.3 April Showers

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout

Review: My least favorite of the series so far. For me, Strout is best in short form, I think. Her short stories and the much shorter novel that launched this series were much better than this.

I'm okay with it being a COVID novel. What I struggled with was what seemed a change in Lucy's character. She's shrill and annoying and ignorant here. I could understand the feebleness - she's getting older after all. But she often seemed truly bewildered and completely dependent on those around her. That's new.

Maybe it's the beginning of Alzheimer's or something for Lucy? We'll see in #5. But overall, I didn't love this one.

+10 Task
+10 Review

Task total =20
Season total = 360

15.1 CYOA

Path: Classics

In a Glass Darkly by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

+15 Task

Task total =15
Season total = 335

20.5 Human Impacts

James by Percival Everett

Review: James was a fantastic reading experience. It's well-written, it's challenging, and it pays respect to Mark Twain without any sort of fawning or homage. It's more than a commentary -- James is a sparring partner for The Adventures of Huck Finn. It feels like the other side of the story that was always missing is now here, and both sides push and pull on each other.

James' code-switching was a brilliant choice and it works so well all throughout the story - it fits right in line with the Jim of Twain's book, while also pointing out that as accurate as Twain was there was much he could not and would not see and hear as a white man. It also serves as humor here and there, it deeply humanizes Jim, it illuminates how much Jim's (and every slave's) life might depend on a word or a look. They can make no mistakes. And it puts in sharp relief how much the white people hid the humanity of Black people from themselves. To the point that they are more bewildered and frightened than angry or dictatorial by Jim's true voice.

+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo (20.1 - James is a retelling of The Adventures of Huck Finn)

Task total =35
Season total = 320

20.4 Climate Science

North Woods by Daniel Mason

Review: So nearly perfect that I gave this 5 stars.

This book is about a place -- and I don't just mean that it has a good sense of place. The place is the main character and all the people here are as secondary as the animals and objects in the story - they come, they cause change and are changed, they go. But this place in the woods of western Massachusetts remains. Mason handles this really expertly - as a reader I felt so grounded in the place that the shifts in people and time felt natural, not jarring.

This is also a gripping read. I was floored more than once with shock or sadness from the plot. And the human characters have psychological depth all throughout.

I was fascinated by the interplay of time and humanity on a place - the way it changes and the ways it stays the same. Mason plays with these ideas throughout the book, giving a real sense of the interconnectedness of the world. There's a structure to life that we can't see in our limited individual time and experience.

There's also a lot of thought given to the way humans center ourselves in the world - we and our needs are most important. Mason's choice to center a spot on the earth (not even a structure or plant) pushes back on this human instinct to center ourselves. Several characters push on it too, like the painter: "But the very act of composition, in that specific sense a painter means when he speaks of the act of bringing together various parts into a harmonious whole -- this act of cohesion naturally places the subject front and center... Can there be art without the human in it? Maybe that is what I wish to capture: beast as seen by beast, tree as seen by tree."

+20 Task (shelved 2 times as climate-change-fiction)
+10 Review

Task total =30
Season total = 285

20.3 Climate Policy

Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen by Liliuokalani

Review: This was a really fascinating and sad piece of history that is completely missing from the U.S. education system. It's Queen Lili'uokalani's story, with a focus on the deceit and tricks U.S. Americans used to take away Hawaii's sovereignty in the 1890s.

Especially in the last third, this book was quite modern in its descriptions of people with power enriching themselves with no care for anyone or anything else, including laws and rights. Some things never change.

The book is also a plea, at a moment in time -- to protect Hawaii's sovereignty before it was too late. Unfortunately, the plea was not heard by those with power.

+20 Task (Queen Lili’uokalani is very much a politician managing Hawaii. The book is also about a political event - the annexation of Hawaii as a U.S. territory in 1898 which had a profound impact on Hawaii.)

+10 Review
+10 Not a Novel (auto-bio)
+10 Oldies (pub’d 1898)

Task total =50
Season total = 255

20.8 Temple Bar Pub

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

Review: This was enjoyable reading for the last few weeks and really well-written. There are some really beautiful descriptions and turns of phrase. The characters are good too, and the plot hangs together well with twists and turns and deeper meanings. The emotional toll of the story runs the spectrum while leaving us with some hope. All that, and I still didn’t love this book.

I think it was just a little too easy for me to love. It felt too gauzy; soft around the edges. I could let the story wash over me without diving deep. Nothing grabbed me and wouldn't let go. Nothing refuses to leave my mind. Nothing felt new or revelatory.

+20 Task (Digby drinks whisky fairly early on, when he gives himself hand surgery)
+15 Combo (10.3 - water; 10.9 - there are many MCs and several work in medicine, including Digby and Mariamma; 20.9 - Abraham Verghese was born in Adis Ababa, Ethiopia)
+10 Review
+10 Jumbo (724 pages)

Task total =55
Season total = 200

20.6 Reducing Emissions

Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution by Laurie Penny

+20 Task
+10 Not a Novel

Task total =30
Season total = 145

20.1 Adaptation and Resilience

Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset

Review: I really enjoyed this Scandinavian classic. Book 1 and Book 3 were great and it was a bit of a slog in the middle when Kristin is basically just pregnant and caring for babies for a decade or so. Even the author seemed a bit bored in Book 2 -- it's the only book where she slips away from Kristin's perspective and gives us others.

Kristin is both a victim of her time's gender and religious politics, and a triumph over them. She gets the man she wants, for better and for worse (much worse, sometimes). She goes from innocent to angry and jealous to wise and accepting over the course of her life, and it all rang true.

The setting feels vaguely like it could be anywhere, anytime -- it's easy to forget this is 15th century (ish) Sweden. It's a character-driven book through and through.

+20 Task (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113576/)
+10 Combo (10.1 - several, one is when Lavrans rides to find Erlend after Kristin is accused of adultery; 20.8 - beer/ale drinking happens repeatedly, including when Erlend offers Kristin a drink of ale early on)
+10 Review
+25 Jumbo (1144 pages)
+10 Oldies (first pub’d 1920)

Task total =75
Season total = 115

10.6 David Lodge

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Review: Similar to The Goldfinch, I think this book could have done with at least 100 fewer pages.

In addition, I found these characters and the situation far less believable than The Goldfinch, somehow. Particularly what Julian Morrow gets away with at a small college. Perhaps at a university where he's an asset in scholarship, but at a college where teaching is the key, his only having half a dozen students for multiple years would never fly.

For me, believability within the story’s context is crucial. I’m cool with magic – I’m not cool with realism that doesn’t feel real.

The story withholds details and releases them slowly. I get why and it it done effectively, but not really my thing.

+10 Task (set almost entirely on a college campus)
+10 Combo (20.2 - Mekka-prijs 1994, Prix des libraires du Québec for Lauréats hors Québec 1994; 20.8 - Henry drinks a scotch whisky and soda “heavy on the Scotch, light on the soda”)
+10 Review
+5 Jumbo (559 pages)
+5 Oldies (first pub’d 1992)

Task total =40
Season total = 40

15.4 BBR

BBR book = Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy

Task I: different language

Flowers in the Mirror by Li Ruzhen

+15 Task (Flowers in the Mirror was written in Chinese; Under the Greenwood Tree was written in English)

Task total =15
Season total = 310

10.8 Theater

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

+10 Task (Has been adapted into a play - here’s one recent example: https://fpatheatre.com/production/the...)
+5 Combo (10.1 - MPGs Classics and Fantasy)
+10 Oldies (pub’d 1942)

Task total =25
Season total = 295

20.2 Edna O’Brien

The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin

+20 Task (Passes the Bechdel test. Essun is a female character who talks with other women, including Ykka and Tonkee, about leading the community, fighting raiders, history, how to save the earth and more.)

Task total =20
Season total = 270

15.3 BBR

BBR book = Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy

Task G: same pub year

Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky

+15 Task (both published in 1872)

Task total =15
Season total = 250

15.2 BBR

BBR book = Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy

Task F: same MPG in the top 3

Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz

+15 Task (they share 2 top 3 shelves: fiction and owned)

Task total =15
Season total = 235

20.10 The ____ of ____

The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk

+20 Task
+5 Combo (20.1 - American Academy author)
+10 Aged (born 1952)
+10 Non-western (Turkey)
+5 Jumbo (560 pages)

Task total =50
Season total = 220

10.1 Member Lottery

Playground by Richard Powers

+10 Task (Shelves: Literary fiction and Science fiction)
+5 Combo (20.1 - American Academy author)

Task total =15
Season total = 170

20.1 Paul Auster and Alice Munro

A History of the World in 10½ Chapters by Julian Barnes

+20 Task (author is on the American Academy author list)
+5 Combo (20.3 - author has published 20+ books)
+10 Aged (author is ~78; born 1946)
+ 5 Oldies (pub’d 1989)

Task total =40
Season total = 155

15.1 BBR

BBR book = Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy

Task A: shared first name

Stoner by John Williams

+15 Task (Under the Greenwood Tree character = William Dewy; Stoner character = William Stoner)

Task total =15
Season total = 115