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

Katy’s comments from the Reading with Style group.

I suspect this may be a no, but what about a film that is currently in production? "On Monday of Last Week" which is a story within The Thing Around Your Neck, is in production -- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5771336/?...

:)

10.5 Mod Task

Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood

This series has been recommended to me several, by people whose tastes I trust, and I'm glad I finally dug in. This was a quick read, light and fun. Phryne Fisher, a high-society London detective, goes to Australia and hunts down the head of a cocaine ring, along the way meeting various colorful characters. The feel and pace of the book reminded me of the Mrs. Pollifax novels or the Amelia Peabody books -- pleasant, fun, fast, and a series I'll return to. The downsides are the same for me (and the same as someone mentioned above) -- the book is so short that some of the plot points are wrapped up quickly rather than told and developed as part of the story.

+10 task
+10 review
+5 combo (10.7)

Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 490

10.9 It's Personal

Cress by Marissa Meyer
(840 Lexile)

In this installment of The Lunar Chronicles, cyborg Cinderella from book 1 and wolf-loving Scarlet from book 2 finally meet up with Cress, a Lunar girl who has been secretly helping the team of outcasts elude the evil Queen Levana. There are wolf-soldier battles, high-speed outer space chases, crash landings, wandering through the Sahara, and plenty of treachery and intrigue. It's a good read! What I am really enjoying is trying to catch all the fairy tale references that the author left in the stories. Cinder and Scarlet were fairly obvious retellings, but "Cress" had me stumped until I did a little Googling and made the Rapunzel connection. I won't give it away but a lot of the names throughout the series are sly references to the Rapunzel story, and it was fun to figure them out as I read.

+10 task (Cress is the name of the MC)
+5 combo (10.7)
+5 jumbo (560 pages)
+10 review

Task Total: 30
Grand Total: 465

10.7 First Letter

Icarus by Deon Meyer

I've always been interested in South African history and have read a lot of history and politics books from the country. However, whenever I'm interested in or visiting a place, I also like to read fiction from that place, especially mystery. I came across Deon Meyer a while ago and have been trying to read through his works. The stories are straightforward crime thrillers -- alcoholic detective, various internal politics, and police work -- but I enjoy them and they're well-done. Plus, I end up learning a bit more about different South African industries or locations in each one. In this installment, a tech mogul and a wine farmer are involved -- the founder of an online "alibi" service for cheaters is killed, and we are simultaneously hearing the story of a major suspect, who owns a wine farm. Good, straightforward criminal fun!

+10 task
+10 LiT (translated from Afrikaans -- for whatever reason that doesn't seem to be listed on this edition but the translation is described here and in the book itself)
+10 Review

Task Total: 30
Grand Total: 435

20.10 Meta fiction

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

I waited so long to read this book and now I regret the wait! I picked it up at least twice and couldn't get into it, but if you are like me and had this experience, it will be worth giving it a second chance. The world of this dystopia is so well-imagined and so detailed that it becomes incredibly easy to envision how this situation came to be. One of the challenges is that the book tells the story of just one man who is left in this dystopian world (Snowman) and to me, this feels like a writing challenge -- I'm just not that interested in 200+ pages of internal thinking! But Atwood handles it wonderfully, bringing in just the right amount of backstory at the precise moments where the backstory will help and intrigue in equal measures. I can't wait to read the sequel.

+20 task
+20 combo (10.2 - Virago; 10.4 - #60 on dark list; 10.7; 20.7 - MA)
+10 review

Post Total: 50
Grand Total: 405

20.6 War

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

For whatever reason, this book was so hard to track down at any of the libraries I've had access to over the past few years, and it was the one Sarah Waters I was most excited about reading, because I am really interested in the time period of the London Blitz. The book tells the stories of a group of interconnected friends and lovers backwards from post-war London through the war. I was happy that I read it, but sadly, it didn't grab me quite as much as I hoped. I really respect Waters' writing chops -- she manages a backwards-through-time structure beautifully and I am always drawn into her language, but I didn't connect with the characters in the way I had hoped. I found myself continuing to read mostly because I wanted to tie up loose ends and because I was intrigued by some of the details of the era -- which is a fine reason to read, but not quite the majestic experience I was hoping for. This is definitely worth reading but maybe not worth the full hype I had for it.

+20 Task (#55 on WWII list)
+10 Combo (20.5 - #44 on list, 10.2 - Virago)
+5 Jumbo (528 pages)
+10 Review

Post Total: 45
Grand Total: 355

20.7 U.S.

Present Darkness by Malla Nunn

This is book 4 in a series following Detective Emmanuel Cooper and his colleague Samuel Shabalala, detectives in a South Africa newly divided by apartheid. It's a fascinating time period to read about, because while I've read a lot about South Africa during the major years of apartheid, this series provides a historical fiction window into the years when apartheid rules were being put into place and people were facing the new realities of racial segregation. In this installment, a white family is attacked and the surviving daughter identifies Shabalala's son as the attacker. Malla Nunn does a great job bringing up fascinating historical issues while crafting a fast-paced and intriguing story.

+20 task (MN = Minnesota)
+5 combo (10.7)
+10 review

Task Total: 35
Grand Total: 310

So, we are still a little short on the B line...
B1 - Shiloh (Ed) and Murder Must Advertise (Beth) and ????
B2 - Virago (Beth or Ed) and Picador (???)
B3 - 10 pts (Rachel) 10 pts (Katy) and 10 pts (Ed)
B4 - 10.1 (Rachel) and 15.1 (Katy)
B5 - Done, we have a billion of these :)

If we did the N line:
N1 - jumbo points (5 from Ed...any others?)
N2 - 20.4 - Russia (Ed), Australia (??), China (??)
N3 - free
N4 - 10.8, 20.8 (Rachel)
N5 - Three 15 pt tasks (Katy, Beth, Ed)

If we did a diagonal (B5 to 01)...
B5 - Done (all 4 of us)
I4 - World War One list (???), World War Two list (???)
N3 - Free
G2 - 10.7 (Rachel), 10.8 (??), 10.9 (???), 20.7 (Katy - I am done with a book for this, about to post)
O5 - 20.8 (Rachel), 20.9 (??), 20.10 (I have started a book for this)

20.1 South America

News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

I really enjoyed this -- if enjoyed can be the right word to describe reading about the kidnapping and killing of many people! I learned a lot about the politics and recent history of Colombia and understand quite a bit more about Pablo Escobar, someone who previously I had only vaguely had a sense of who he was. I had only read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's fiction before, but if anything, I enjoyed his journalistic writing more. The writing flowed smoothly and the way he managed the multiple storylines of different hostages and the different political machinations worked for me. Definitely recommended, and a pleasant surprise!

+20 task (author born in Colombia)
+5 combo (20.10)
+10 Lost in Translation
+10 Review

Task Total: 45
Grand Total: 275

I have a 10.2 I can bump to the top of the list, and I'm almost done with a 20.1 that will give us 10 more LiT points.

15.1 FYTS: Time Traveler
2014-1964

Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works by Elizabeth Green
Publish date 2014

+15 Task
+5 Bonus (nonfiction)

Post Total: 20
Season Total: 230

Ed wrote: "Beth wrote: "Either works. We could claim B5 now but if we has 30 lit points, which we don't yet, we might want to wait until we were sure which of the two options we wanted to claim."

ok...might ..."

I also just posted 20.9, 10.1, and 20.3, all with review points. I don't think that 20.9 and 20.3 help except for unnecessary review points, but 10.1 gets us 1/2 of B4, and the other half is about to come -- I'm about to post 15.1, which I just finished! (Well, 20.9 would help for 05, and 20.3 would get us 1/3 of 03)

I think we now have --
B1 - 1/3 done
B2 - 1/2 done
B3 - 1/3 done
B4 - done
B5 - done

We're closest on B still, I think - and then once we've posted that we can use the B5 to do the 5 line, or switch over to somewhere else. :)

20.3 Winners!

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

This novel got such amazing, glowing reviews, that perhaps I was a little too hyped up to read it. I definitely enjoyed the book, but didn't fall in love. The story follows Agnieszka, who is taken by the Dragon (the local wizard). The area gives up 1 girl every ten years and doesn't know what happens to them in those years, though they seem to turn out fine in the end! Agnieszka, however, has magic, and so her time with the Dragon will train her to use her magic. From there, she gets embroiled in some nasty intra-kingdom political disputes and faces down all manner of complexities, magical and otherwise. It's a fun book, great descriptions of magic, and interesting world-building -- worth reading, for sure, just not as life-changing as I had been led to expect!

+20 task (Nebula winner 2016)
+10 review

Task Total: 30
Grand Total: 210

20.9 Politics

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

This book completely blew me away. Thanks for the recommendation in group reads! It read, to me, like really high-quality journalism -- the stories of individuals, clearly well studied and carefully written, woven consistently through the informational parts of the text, rather than plopped at the front as a hook to draw me in. I came to feel like I knew the main actors in the book. I also walked away with some horrifying new information -- like the "nuisance laws" which incentivize landlords to summarily evict tenants who call 911, even for the kinds of things that you would suppose society wants 911 called for! It highlights the catch-22 that many lower-income folks find themselves in and makes the housing crisis feel comprehensible (and thus maybe solvable).

+20 task
+10 combo (10.10; 20.7 - MD)
+10 review

Task Total: 40
Grand Total: 180

10.1 Square Peg

The Battle for Room 314: My Year of Hope and Despair in a New York City High School by Ed Boland

As a teacher, I am simultaneously drawn to and skeptical of the large genre of books that are about someone's tough time in the classroom, especially when that someone didn't teach for very long before writing the book! However, there are a couple reasons why Ed Boland's book got mostly past my skepticism. First, he took the job seriously and tried to get really good at the craft, even when he wasn't successful. Second, he rarely (but sometimes) lapses into "oh, poor kids, lucky I am here to save them" -- mostly he is quite honest about his own failures, when they occur, and his students' behavior, however it reflects on him or them. And finally, it's well written and makes for an interesting read.

+10 task
+10 review

Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 140

I'm about to get on a flight home from the west coast, and so when I get home I should be able to post a couple of things, including a LiT, a square peg, and 15.1.

:)

Cool! We can start working on B and then as things go on we can see if we're able to tackle another line :)

I started one of my potential square pegs...and will review it, so that can get us more review points and 1/2 of B4. It's going to go quickly!

OK, taking a look at what we have already named, I'm thinking that maybe the B line, 5 line, or N line would work for us to tackle first... Here's how that would break down, below. And that's not even counting Rachel's books! Let me know what you guys think!

B Line:
B1: Read 3 Group read Titles
Beth - Murder Must Advertise
??

B2: Complete 10.2 by reading 1 book off of each list:
Ed or Beth: Virago author
Is anyone reading a Picador blog author? (I could...hadn't planned on it but I could happily do so)

B3: Earn 30 LiT points
Ed: Eugene Onegin
Katy: News of a Kidnapping
??

B4: Complete 10.1 and any 15 point task
Task 10.1 – I can do this one - I have several possible square pegs to read, and haven't used it yet
15 point task: Whoever finishes a 15 pointer first. I think most of us are working on 15s.

B5: Earn 40 Review points
I think a lot of us are posting reviews so the first 4 that get posted can count.

******
The 5 Line
B5: Earn 40 Review points
The first 4 that get posted can count.

I5: Complete 20.10 with a male and female author
Male: Beth - Diamond Age (Stephenson)
Female: Katy - Oryx and Crake (Atwood)

N5: Complete 3 15-point tasks
Lots of us are doing these - first three can count

G5: 25 Jumbo points
???? I have a couple possibilities for jumbo but not more than 5 points worth of jumbo per book, probably.

05: Complete all poll tasks
10.2 - Beth, Ed, or Katy
10.3 - Ed
10.4 - Beth or Ed

**********
The N line

N1: 25 jumbo points
???

N2: 20.4 claimed for each country
China - Beth
Australia - (I could do this though hadn't planned it)
Russia - Ed

N3: free cell!

N4: Complete 10.8 and 20.8
10.8 - Ed?
20.8 - ?

N5: Complete 3 15-point tasks
Lots of us are doing these - first three can count

Hi team! I'm pretty flexible in terms of what I can read in July. Right now I'm visiting my sister and her new baby but when I get home tomorrow night, I will take a look at which bingo lines we seem like we're close to with what you've listed, Ed and Beth, and see where I can best fill in.

20.8 Kotick

The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle

I am feeling myself get on a bit of a Sherlock Holmes kick, since last season I read what I found out later was technically book 3 of his stories. I remember when I was growing up being fascinated by my parents' complete Sherlock Holmes -- a huge brown book with a pipe smoking detective on the spine. Now that I'm finally diving in, I'm enjoying the stories just as much. I think I prefer the short stories, though -- this novel was interesting but almost too drawn out, despite being relatively short. It tells the story of Holmes and Watson tracking down an ages-old plot formed in colonial India, involving stolen pearls and treasure and some pretty awful weaponry. A quick, enjoyable read, but I may stick to the stories for a while!

+20 task (#29 on first list)
+5 combo (20.5 - #70 on list)
+10 review

Task Total: 35
Grand Total: 120