Bucket’s
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(group member since Feb 13, 2015)
Bucket’s
comments
from the Reading with Style group.
Showing 81-100 of 303
10.8 BAD Sydney Crime Writers FestivalThe Residue Years by Mitchell S. Jackson
+10 Task (new to me author, genre: crime)
+10 Combo (10.5 - 7 letters in Jackson; 20.1 - assoc. Prof. of writing at NYU)
Task total =20
Season total = 110
10.9 Keep it Short!Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine
+10 Task (short stories)
+10 Combo (10.6 - "We had heard stories of piglet dissections, the infamous 'growing and changing' unit, rocket launches with carbon dioxide canisters, and a cow's lung blackened and doused in cigarette smoke, but no one had warned us about this."; 20.3 - KaLi Fajardo-AnsTiNe = Li, Lithium; F, Fluorine; Ti, Titanium; Ne, Neon)
+10 Young (Kali Fajardo-Anstine is 37: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_Fa...)
Task total =30
Season total = 90
20.5 Speech and DebateWhen Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
+20 Task (supernatural: women turn into dragons)
+15 Combo (10.6 - "My mother's eyes were wide and bright. Gold again."; 20.1 - teacher per her GR bio; 20.3 - KellY bArNhill = K, Potassium; Yb, Ytterbium; Ar, Argon; Nh, Nihonium)
Task total =35
Season total = 55
10.5 Lucky SevensSo You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
+10 Task (7 words in title)
+5 Combo (20.8 - Ijeoma Oluo was born in 1980 LINK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ijeoma_...)
+5 Young (Ijeoma Oluo is 43 or 44)
Task total =20
Season total = 20
15.4 Celebration of Styles2666 by Roberto Bolaño
+15 Task (Lost in Translation - from the Spanish)
Task total = 15
Season total = 160
15.3 Celebration of StylesMiddlemarch by George Eliot
+15 Task (1001 books)
Task total = 15
Season total = 145
20.10 LettersSometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
REVIEW: This book is so very Oregon, which increased the thrill ten-fold for me. Everything is wet and green in a forest full of giant trees and beer-drinking, hard-working men. Kesey's first draw for me was how well he captured Oregon.
The second draw, once I adjusted, was his writing style. The perspective is constantly switching without a chapter or section break, or any indication whatsoever. Frequently there are multiple perspectives at once (one in parenthetical notes sprinkled among the other). In the beginning this meant keeping careful track and watching for those switches. But after 100 or so pages, once I knew the characters well, this became fascinating rather than hard work. Kesey also threw in a little light stream-of-consciousness in tense situations (when Lee is high on the bus trip to Oregon, when various fist fights occur).
The third thing that Kesey did brilliantly, especially for a reader like me, is create exceptional characters - and a whole group of them! They are stubborn and angry, and very much alive. I was also struck by what tied them all together - their yearning to be true to themselves. Every important character and many less-important ones felt this struggle.
The climax of this yearning among the characters to be themselves comes from Lee towards the end of the novel. He says that each of us has a stronghold that can never be taken, only surrendered, and he wants his back: "Which meant winning back the strength I had bartered away years before for a watered-down love. Which meant winning back the pride I had exchanged for pity."
+20 Task (Lee writes to his roommate back in New York - with pencil on ledger paper - throughout the novel.)
+10 Review
+5 Jumbo (640 pages)
+5 Oldies (pub’d 1964)
Task total =40
Season total = 130
10.7 ScrabbleTomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
REVIEW: For me, this was okay. The plot clips along and is cohesive and interesting; I definitely wanted to know what would happen next. However, the plot points are not always believable, unfortunately. In the same vein, the characters are well-rounded, but not very realistic. I understood the author's intentions for their motives, but didn't always believe them. Sometimes I really, really didn’t believe them.
The best part of this book was the world-building in the video games themselves, and the pure love and excitement the characters have for creating and inhabiting those worlds. This was fun and interesting, but also had more depth than any of the relationships between the characters.
+10 Task (47 point title)
+10 Review
Task total =20
Season total = 90
10.4 DebutLessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
REVIEW: I knew going in that this would be more fun than substantial, but I was pleasantly surprised by this book. There were several moments that made me laugh out loud, and while the characters aren't very realistic, they are quite fun and quirky.
The book has an inspirational, feel-good tone that leaves you grateful for how far women have come in breaking down the patriarchy. However, it's not particularly energizing - the focus is ONLY on the progress feminism has made since the 1950s/60s. No hint at work that remains to be done. There is only the lightest touch on racism and no mention of LGBTQ discrimination.
We bounce around between perspectives (including the dog) and in time (to some extent) in a way that is clunky, but helps keep a quick pace.
The last 25ish pages of the book are basically a summary of the author's themes and intentions. To my annoyance, she explains everything she's shown in the novel: the parallels between chemistry as science and chemistry as two people belonging together; the ways that knowledge lead to action and change; that this book is about early feminism.
+10 Task
+10 Review
Task total =20
Season total = 70
15.2 Celebration of StylesThe Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
+15 Task (Young - born 5/3/1985: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becky_C... )
Task total =15
Season total = 50
15.1 Celebration of StylesBetween the Woods and the Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor
+15 Task (Not a novel - memoir)
Task total =15
Season total = 35
10.3 VowelsTom Lake by Ann Patchett
The story itself and the sense of place (a cherry farm in western Michigan) here are excellent.
The characters are decent, but the way the story is told stifled them a bit. Everyone is seen through the eyes of Lara - we see her daughters and husband through her in the present story line, and we see Peter Duke, Pallace, Sebastian and the others through her in the past storyline. Because Lara is telling a story about the past with the benefit of hindsight, we're never truly able to be in the moment with the characters in her past, including herself. Lara has edited, deepened her understanding, rationalized, etc. - this is a narrative choice I can respect, but I'm not sure it was the right choice.
In the present, the daughters feel like foils for their mom's story - they react in different ways and ask different questions, serving more to tease out details than to be people in their own right.
Similar to State of Wonder, Patchett makes what I consider pretty clunky narrative choices throughout her telling. She hides details to build suspense for the reader in ways that are nonsensical in the story. I wish that Patchett would rely less on trying to build suspense and have a big reveal, because she's an excellent writer and doesn't need to cling so tightly to her very-blatant puppet strings.
+10 Task (Ann)
+10 Review
Task total =20
Season total = 20
20.9 FavoritesThe Book of Goose by Yiyun Li
+20 Task (Spring 2022 20.7 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Yiyun Li was born in China and immigrated to the US)
Points this post: 20
Total points: 210
20.8 FavoritesWide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
+20 Task (Winter 2019-2020 20.3 She Writes - female author, female MC)
+5 Before 1998 (published 1966)
Points this post: 25
Total points: 190
20.7 FavoritesThe Passenger by Cormac McCarthy
+20 Task (Fall 2022 20.9 ABCs - author's initials are alphabetical: CM)
Points this post: 20
Total points: 165
20.6 FavoritesEx Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman
+20 Task (Spring 2021 20.2 Ann/e - author's name is Anne)
Points this post: 20
Total points: 145
20.5 FavoritesA New Literary History of America by Greil Marcus
+20 Task (Winter 2022-2023 20.5 Books - MPG books about books)
+5 Big (1095 pages)
Points this post: 25
Total points: 125
20.4 FavoritesThe Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
+20 Task (Summer 2019 20.6 Characters - Book info lists 11 named characters)
+5 Big (577 pages)
Points this post: 25
Total points: 100
20.3 FavoritesThe Candy House by Jennifer Egan
+20 Task (Spring 2020 20.6 Katherine Anne Porter - Jennifer Egan is an American woman short story writer)
Points this post: 20
Total points: 75
20.2 FavoritesThe Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
+20 Task (Spring 2023 20.3 POV - 4 different POVs in this novel)
+5 Big (512 pages)
Points this post: 25
Total points: 55
