Katy’s
Comments
(group member since Aug 04, 2010)
Katy’s
comments
from the Reading with Style group.
Showing 881-900 of 1,214
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Katy wrote: "How about Alan Furst? "While Furst's novels are well researched and suffused with a strong sense of time and place, they are rendered in a spare, cinematic style that ..."
Thanks! I'm excited -- I haven't read him yet but saw that you've rated him highly.
15.2 - DominoesA Night Divided by Jennifer A. Nielsen (810 Lexile)
+15 task (published in 2015, same decade as 15.1)
Task Total: 15
Grand Total: 345
How about Alan Furst? "While Furst's novels are well researched and suffused with a strong sense of time and place, they are rendered in a spare, cinematic style that keeps the fast-paced action from bogging down in historical data." -- from this link
10.7 Cozy HolidaysThe Elusive Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman
This was one of my favorites in the Mrs. Pollifax series that I've been re-reading over the past few months. Mrs. Pollifax, intrepid NJ garden club leader and CIA spy, heads to Bulgaria with forged passports for Underground resistance members, and ends up, of course, embroiled in much more. The formula is predictable but pleasant and engaging. I read this one on an airplane and it was perfect for that type of reading – fun, interesting, but not too taxing. This time through the series, I'm also realizing how much about the countries Mrs. Pollifax visits I don't actually know, and am interested to learn more about Bulgaria's history.
+10 task (14 users tagged)
+5 combo (20.10)
+10 review
+5 oldies (pub. 1971)
+5 series (#3 in Mrs. Pollifax series)
Task Total: 35
Grand Total: 315
20.1 Grazia DeleddaThe Farm by Tom Rob Smith
I bumped this to the top of my list after reading the group's reviews - and I, too, had the experience of racing right through this book. It's a compelling read. It's hard to sum up without spoilers, but in short, Daniel's parents, who recently moved to rural Sweden, contact him out of the blue, each with a different agenda. His father wants to tell him that his mother has been committed to a psychiatric ward; his mother tells him she's on the way to London with evidence of a dark and dangerous conspiracy. Much of the book is hearing the mom's story and evidence, punctuated by moments of tension that were surprisingly effective, considering that remote storytelling isn't an easy method to use to build tension. Partway through, I began to wonder if this would be a gaslighting story, an unreliable narrator story, a twist ending...and yet with all that wondering, the ending still managed to surprise me.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+15 Combo (10.2, 10.9 - 3.52, 10.10)
Task Total: 45
Grand Total: 280
20.9 Winnie the PoohGaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers
All my life, I had thought I had read this book already! But when I began reading it this month, I realized I hadn't - and what a nice surprise! I will definitely pick up more Sayers. In this story, Lord Peter Wimsey helps Harriet Vane, his heretofore-unrequited love, solve a case of increasingly malicious and dangerous pranks being played at Shrewsbury, a fictional all-women's college of Oxford. There were a couple great things about this book. First, she evokes Oxford beautifully. I spent a summer there once and, at least to me, she really captured the feeling of the place. Second, the plot was pleasantly puzzling. I was consistently intrigued trying to figure out the solution. Finally, there are plenty of details woven through the story that were interesting outside of the mystery - like details of how women's higher education was perceived, or details of English life in the 1930s. Highly recommended!
+20 task (pub. 1935)
+10 combo (10.4 - #283 on list; 20.1)
+10 review
+10 oldies (1935)
+5 jumbo (501 pages)
+5 series (#12 in Lord Peter Wimsey series)
Task Total: 60
Grand Total: 235
Read a non-fiction book.
20.1 Grazia DeleddaBlood Harvest by S.J. Bolton
I was really excited to find a reference for this book as having a sense of place, because I am a huge fan of Bolton's writing and think that is one of the things she does best. This book, in particular, does a great job evoking a small English country village that is both modern day and not quite right, in a terrifying and very old-world kind of way. The Fletcher family has just moved to this village, building a house overlooking the churchyard. At the same time, a new vicar arrives to reopen a church that has been closed for years. Both sets of newcomers start to realize that something is very wrong, as the Fletcher kids start to see a girl roaming around the churchyard at night and eerie things start to happen. The twists at the end left me breathless and eager to finish.
+20 task
+10 review
Task Total: 30
Grand Total: 170
How about Elizabeth George, according to this link -- https://www.strandmag.com/the-magazin...And for S.J. Bolton's Blood Harvest -- http://butbooksarebetter.blogspot.com... (third paragraph in reviewer's thoughts)
10.9 Realistic RatingsA Spy by Nature by Charles Cumming
This was an interesting read. I enjoy spy novels, and I've read one other book by Cumming before. I didn't enjoy this one quite as much. Without spoiling the plot, there was a point where suddenly, the action jumped forward and from there on, you had to figure out what the mission was and what Alec, the protagonist, was trying to do. Only at the very end was it revealed. At first this annoyed me - it seemed like too big of a leap. I kept going back, thinking I had missed a page or something. By the end, once I was sure I knew (and then once it was confirmed) I could appreciate the drama of having to guess - but along the way it was irritating. On the plus side, there was a lot of fascinating storyline about how someone might become a spy and what kinds of work post-Cold-War spies might be engaged in.
+10 task (3.48 rating)
+10 review
Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 140
Kate S wrote: "Katy wrote: "10.5 Favorite AuthorsChimera by Mira Grant
Although Mira Grant does write fast (especially considering she is also writing as Seanan McGuire!), I de..."
Sorry Kate! The MPE seems to have changed recently...
10.5 Favorite AuthorsChimera by Mira Grant
Although Mira Grant does write fast (especially considering she is also writing as Seanan McGuire!), I definitely was impatiently awaiting this book's release around Thanksgiving. This is an odd series in that I found the books got progressively better (more often I feel like book 2 disappoints). I was already dying to know the outcome and Mira Grant didn't let me down. By now, the human-tapeworm war has broken out in earnest and we get some new revelations about the nature of the conflict (and of the tapeworms!). Sal has some tough choices to make and changes in interesting ways. I was sad to see this one come to an end.
+10 task
+10 combo (10.2, 10.9 - 3.94 rating)
+10 review
+5 jumbo (512 pages)
+15 series (third book posted in the series this season)
Task Total: 50
Grand Total: 125
10.9 Realistic RatingsSymbiont by Mira Grant
The second book in the Parasitology series, I think, is even better than the first – now we are well underway in the zombie/parasite apocalypse, and the challenge for Sal (our heroine) and her friends becomes figuring out what is causing the tapeworms to overtake their human hosts, while avoiding the clutches of both the US Army, the evil corporation that sold the tapeworms in the first place, and the tapeworm-human hybrids that are also attempting to wipe out the human race. No biggie. I think what I enjoyed most about this second book is the way that the science was developed. World building is one of Mira Grant’s strong suits as a writer, and here she really outdoes herself with making it seem feasible that tapeworms could end up becoming almost indistinguishable from humans in this fashion.
+10 task (3.64 rating)
+5 combo (10.2)
+10 review
+5 jumbo (608 pages)
+10 series (#2 in series - posted the first in previous message)
Task Total: 40
Grand Total: 75
10.2 NoelParasite by Mira Grant
This was one of those eagerly-anticipated rereads for me -- book #3 in the series just came out and Mira Grant is one of my favorite authors (also, as I learned from doing 10.5, my #1 most read author too!). Reading it a second time made me think about the series a little differently -- basically, Mira Grant spends her days thinking of different ways that the world will end, and different ways that zombies will arise. Not a bad life! In this series, a company sells designer tapeworms that secrete all our medical needs, which everyone swallows eagerly -- and then, of course, things go wrong. A delightful, humorous science fiction read.
+10 task
+5 combo (10.9 - 3.65 rating)
+10 review
+5 jumbo (512 pages)
+5 series (#1 in series)
Task Total: 35
Grand Total: 35
Richard Price is listed in the PDF document...would The Whites work? On the cover it lists "Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt" and both are listed as authors on GR. Odd way to use a pseudonym!
20.8 DARThe Pox Party by M.T. Anderson
Lexile 1090
This was a hard book to get into but an equally hard one to put down. I have been away traveling in Asia for the past week and a half (hence the lack of posting, as well as the sudden completion of a ton of books - 24 hours of flying time will do that to you!) and I started this on an airplane. That was probably not the best move, at least not at the end of a flight, since it is a little hard to get into. Octavian, a slave being brought up in the "College of Lucidity" is treated as a subject of rotating psychological observations and lessons. As times grow tougher, the purposes of teaching Octavian take a turn for the worse. The story fascinated me because I think that the issue of slavery during the Revolutionary War era is really interesting, and how it was and was not addressed, and the book immediately made me want to run out and get some nonfiction to find out what was and wasn't true. (I started reading Revolutionary Summer, too, which was a great pairing, but don't know if I'll finish it tonight!)
+20 task (set in Revolutionary-era Boston...features Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775)
+10 review
Task Total: 30
Grand Total: 845
20.10 InterconnectedThe Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
I liked this one way more than I expected! I initially picked it up just because it was a group read - but as it turned out, I found it pretty enjoyable. As others have posted, I found it humorous and light, not necessarily deep, but it was neat to see a totally different style of writing than what I typically read, and fascinating to read about the exploits of Jeeves and Wooster. I wonder how common this lifestyle really was -- it seems hard to imagine many people living a life with no obligations, no job, just spending your time entertaining and getting your butler to solve your friends’ romantic problems. Hard to imagine, but definitely intriguing! Just imagine how much reading we could all do if we had butlers to handle the other stuff!
+20 Task
+10 Combo (10.10, 10.9)
+10 Review
+10 Not-a-Novel (Short Stories)
+10 Oldies (1923)
Task Total: 60
Grand Total: 815
15.1 TTUS Land Cruiser Round 2Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight
NEW YORK
Task Total: 15
Grand Total: 755
