Katy’s Comments (group member since Aug 04, 2010)

Katy’s comments from the Reading with Style group.

15.1 CYOA

Path: Mystery

The New Couple in 5B by Lisa Unger

Post total: 15
Season total: 115

20.5 Human Impacts

The Leavers by Lisa Ko

A beautifully written book exploring immigration, adoption, culture, language, identity...and a book that comprises a few different stories. One story is Deming, whose mother disappears when he's 11. He's subsequently adopted and moved to Westchester where he struggles to find his place. Another story is his mother's story, as she moves from a village to a town in China, then to the United States, with a baby, and back to China. We also meet powerful characters like Michael, Deming's childhood friend who he reconnects with as a young adult, and a girl who was also adopted but whose life proceeded quite differently.

+20 Task (Nominated 2018)
+10 Combo (20.2 - APA Award, Penn Bellwether Prize; 20.8 - the main character orders whiskey in a bar before relapsing in his poker addiction, chapter 8)
+10 Review

Post total: 40

Season total: 95

10.5 Tom Robbins

Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping On a Dead Man by Jesse Q. Sutanto

This is book 2 in a very entertaining series. Unusually, I liked this book 2 more than book 1. Vera Wong is an elderly tea shop owner in San Francisco's Chinatown who, in book 1, stumbled onto a dead body in her tea shop. She solved the crime and in doing so, brought together a makeshift family around her of the various colorful characters surrounding the death. This book follows a similar pattern - a young woman asks for her help, which leads her to various investigations and a lot of new friends. Despite sounding a bit cheesy with the new friends angle, it's a funny and engaging read, and the context of the mystery in this book was eye-opening to me.

+10 Task (MPG Humor)
+5 Combo (20.8 - "Natalie hands Vera a glass of whiskey." - ch.16)
+10 Review

Post total: 25

Season total: 55

10.1 Back to Basics

The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman

Mrs. Pollifax books are like comfort food for me, and so when I have a long airplane ride, I like to download one or two. It gets me excited about travel (all the more because I don't expect to be taken captive in my own travels!) and feels like the kind of reading that I can take up even in the deepest depths of jet lag. If you haven't read the Mrs. Pollifax series, this is book 1 - the series tells the adventures of Mrs. Pollifax, a widow whose life has started to feel purposeless. Her solution is to walk into the CIA and offer her services, which, remarkably, they take her up on. However, as will become the pattern of the books, the "easy" task she's set will become much more complicated as the book goes on!

+10 Task (Mrs. Pollifax journeys by donkey, under duress, to a different Albanian city where she is held for a week or two)
+5 Combo (20.7)
+10 Review
+5 Oldies (1966)

Post total: 30

Season total: 30

10.10 Group Reads

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

+10 task (author of Yellowface)
+5 jumbo (545 pg)
+5 combo (20.2 - Rin and her female roommates often discuss survival at the academy)

Task Total: 20
Season Total: 225

10.9 Scandinavia

Locked In by Jussi Adler-Olsen

+10 task (takes place in Denmark)
+5 jumbo (512 pages)
+5 combo (20.4 - MPGs mystery and crime)

Task Total: 20
Season Total: 205

10.4 Penguin Awareness Day

Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside by Xiaowei Wang

+10 task
+10 Non-Western (Chinese author and setting)

Task Total: 20
Season Total: 185

10.2 Holiday Travel

Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson

+10 task (all takes place on a train ride across Australia!)
+5 combo (20.4 - MPGs mystery and crime)

Task Total: 15
Season Total: 165

I like Non Western and Lost in Translation - even though I don't always rack up big points with those - because it does push me to think about my author choices.

I personally love Not a Novel because I read a lot of nonfiction.

I agree about the birth year issues...though sometimes it's good practice for me to just accept that I have to give up those points! :)

Martha Shelley

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_... - she's primarily known as a lesbian activist and writer

20.10 The __ of ___

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Ann Older

+20 task
+10 combo (10.2 - lots of travel between cities on the planet, approved in help thread! - 20.2 - the two main characters are female and talk about the crime throughout)

Task Total: 30
Season Total: 150

20.3 Francine Pascal & Nelson DeMille

Murder in Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie

+20 task (Agatha Christie published more than 66 books!)
+15 combo (10.2 - frequent travel on intercity trains within Iraq, 20.2 - Nurse Amy & Miss Johnson talk about the murder, 20.4 - "mystery" and "crime" are MPGs)
+10 Aged (lived to 86)
+10 Oldies (pub 1936)

Task Total: 55
Season Total: 120

20.2 Edna O'Brien

Yours Cheerfully by A.J. Pearce

+20 task (passes Bechdel test - Emmy and Bunty talk about many things including their families, the war, and work)

Task Total: 20
Season Total: 65

20.2 Edna O'Brien

Almost Surely Dead by Amina Akhtar

+20 task (passes Bechdel test - Dunia, Nadia, and Liz all talk about who is trying to kill her, plus work)

Task Total: 20
Season Total: 45

10.9 Scandinavia

The Winners by Fredrik Backman

+10 task (set in Sweden)
+5 Jumbo (671 pages)

Task Total: 15
Season Total: 25

10.6 Year of the Snake

I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue

+10 task

Task Total: 10
Season Total: 10

I'm reading The Mimicking of Known Successes which so far involves a number of train journeys to solve a murder. It is a large train network connecting multiple cities but on another planetary system, not Earth. Does that work?

10.8 BAD Sydney Crime Writers Festival

It's Elementary by Elise Bryant

+10 task (mystery, new-to-me author)
+15 combo (10.6 - "a mouth guard and a double dose of magnesium" page 1; 20.1 - Elise Bryant was a special education teacher per her GR bio; 20.3 - eLISE BRyaNt - Lithium, Selenium, Bromine, Nitrogen)

Task Total: 25
Season Total: 415

20.4 Home Economics
Read a book with a recipe that is not a cookbook

Guilt and Ginataan by Mia P. Manansala

+20 task (recipes throughout and at the end of this mystery novel)
+10 combo (20.1 - she was an ESL teacher for years according to this interview - https://www.apalaweb.org/apala-author...) (20.3 - in miaPMaNANsALa - Promethium PM, Sodium NA, Nitrogen N, Aluminum AL)
+5 series (#5 in Tita Rosie's Kitchen series)

Task Total: 35
Season Total: 390

15.9 Scrabble

Dark Corners by Megan Goldin

Tile: I9 - author's name has an I in it
Letter points: 1

+15 Task

Task total: 15

Season Total: 355