Cat’s
Comments
(group member since Aug 02, 2017)
Cat’s
comments
from the Reading with Style group.
Showing 141-160 of 303
Task 20.8 - Mother-DaughterOranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
pub 1985
I had read this before, in the dim past, and recall vaguely enjoying it. I returned to it lo these many years later on audio, narrated by Winterson herself. And it was an utter joy!
Listening to the author, with her familiar Manchester accent, like my own mother, the characters came to life, and I could recognise some of the attitudes from amongst my family (older generations). Not the fundamentalist religious parts, but the no-nonsense, what I consider typically Northern approach to life. I fear I may have snorted aloud in amusement at various points, in public no less!
The book explores the fictional Jeanette’s relationship with her mother and her religion as she grows up, and realises that she is lesbian. Whilst it’s difficult at time - there is a horrific scene where the Church exorcises Jeanette of her immoral behaviour (spoiler: not successfully) - I enjoyed this very much. The mother-daughter bond is explored with a lightness of touch which doesn’t diminish from the trueness of the depiction, and whilst the ending is exactly uplifting, it’s certainly believable.
Totally recommended, especially on audio.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo 10.8
+5 Oldies
Post total = 40
Season total = 880
15.3 - Reading GloballySetting: Guatemala
Grave Secrets by Kathy Reichs
+15 Task
+15 first visitor
Post total: 30
Season total: 840
there was some chat about Game of Thrones being valid here or not.More generally, would books set in a medieval-level technology fantasy world (e.g. highest form of transport being horse-equivalent / no gunpowder etc) be OK?
20.7 - Single WordInferno by Dan Brown
It’s a Dan Brown. Not much more to say, really: workmanlike, some twists, some art history & symbology, an attractive woman in her twenties falling for perma-bachelor wonderman Langdon, and so forth.
There’s some variations here: the bad guy’s already dead, and it’s a race to stop the release of something sinister into the world. It’s never made clear why the bad guy decided to put his sinister plan at risk by creating the clues Langdon is unravelling, but hey - why am I bringing logic into this ride?!
As always, if you don’t mind some light patronisiation from the author and Langdon, and can go with the everyman wonderman which the good professor is set up to be, there’s entertainment to be had here. I’m not going to be buying #5 in the series when it’s released, but if it wanders past me in the library, my experience here hasn’t put me off reading more of Langdon’s adventures.
+20 Task
+10 Review
Post total = 30
Season total = 795
10.2 - SpyAn Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris
Based on a true story, this is a compelling presentation of a dramatic miscarriage of justice. Harris is a reliable author, especially of psychological explorations, and this didn’t let me down.
I went into it knowing nothing of the Dreyfus Affair (which prompted Emile Zola’s famous J'Accuse! article), but the twists and turns were dramatised brilliantly, and I was hooked. It’s presented in the first person narrative of the French officer who worked to expose the true spy (though who was never convicted of the crime, and who escaped to middle-class England) and exonerate the innocent man (who nethertheless spent several years on Devil’s Island - of Papillon fame, iyi).
The characters all come to life, warts and all - a huge part of the willingness to convict and unwillingness to review the conviction was the systemic, endemic antisemitism of the French Army at the time. Even our hero is personally antagonistic to the Jew, Dreyfus, but his sense of honour to do what is right is greater than his anti-semitic opinions. Honestly, the repeated anti-semitic comments did get wearing, but I understand that it was necessary to do something to make clear to modern sensibilities (ignoring all the prejudiced ignoramuses that sadly still exist) why this travesty was allowed to happen.
Recommended.
spy: 28 shelvings
+10 Task
+10 Review
+10 Combo 10.8; 20.5 (set in 1890s)
Post total = 30
Season total = 765
20.5 - OldEverything and the Moon by Julia Quinn
I’ve enjoyed other books by Quinn, but this one irked me something chronic. The characters, the anachronisms, just… no.
I guess some more context would help! So, this is deliberately set-up as instalove lost and refound, and the travails of getting to the happy ending. Oddly, I didn’t mind the instalove that much - I mean, I’m reading a romance novel, it’s NOT real life, that’s why I picked it up! I did mind that neither character acted consistently during their troubles. If there’s this meeting of minds, why did they both immediately assume the worst? If there’s this meeting of souls, why didn’t they listen and understand the needs of each other? Honestly, the idea that kidnapping your beloved is a good plan? To save herself? Nope.
And the anachronisms - this is set in the Regency period. References to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is just going to jar me even further out of the moment than having to deal with ridiculous not-listening protagonists! Ditto references to a colour dye that wasn’t widely available at that point in time (mauve - I grant that the colour existed, just that it was hideously expensive before the commercial dye was produced in the Victorian age).
So, not Quinn’s best, by a long stretch.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+10 Combo 10.8; 20.10
Post total: 40
Season total: 735
20.10 - Uncommon LetterBoats and Bad Guys by Diana Xarissa
I picked this up because it was set on the Isle of Man, a place for which I have a great fondness - it’s this haven from a different time, but with a couple of brilliant factoids I love: the longest continuous form of democratic parliament in the Tynwald (with associated brilliant bits of tradition mentioned in this book) (also: in your face, Westminster, so called “mother of parliaments”); the earliest adopters of female suffrage (limited suffrage granted even earlier than New Zealand, though I’ll grant the Kiwis went further).
Anyway, I enjoyed this light-weight piece of nonsense for the gems of Manx-ness scattered in there, and was relieved to find that I didn’t completely hate all the main characters. I mean, one’s a ghost and another’s a cat, so SOME suspension of rational thought is required. But entertaining enough.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo 10.8
Post total: 35
Season total: 695
10.7 - Big WordsThe Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch
I love the Peter Grant/Rivers of London series - it has the perfect mix of science and magic, sarcasm and wit for me, and this novella is a good addition to the world.
In it we spend time with some of the so-far peripheral characters - Jaget Kumar and the brilliant Abigail. Abigail rapidly became a star for me, with her stroppy attitude but fierce drive to get what she wants. The plot was inevitably much less tangled than a full novel, but that’s not a bad thing, and Aaronovitch still manages to pack in a load of interesting texture to the story.
I listened to the audio, and cannot commend Kobna Holdbrook-Smith's narration highly enough - I almost restarted listening immediately. 5*
+10 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo 10.8
Post total: 25
Season total: 660
@Paula, I think that the Oldie points are for the publish date (1991), not a combo for the task
will a space ship work?In Children of Time there is a spaceship-ark, and its journey to find a new place for the "cargo" to live is key to the plot. As is watching it stay to fall to pieces and be jury-rigged with increasing desperation...
The book does venture onto a world too, but I estimate that slightly more than half is set on the decaying ship...
15.1 - Reading Globally Setting: Brunei Darussalam
The Last Harem by George P. Saunders
Ebook only, approx 53k words
+15 task
+15 first visitor
Book total =30
Season total = 635
Task 10.8 - Double Letter NamesMidnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew J. Sullivan
I enjoyed this book, but ultimately it fell a little short of what it set out to achieve. Weaving a complex web of plotting, sadly some of the character development got lost, leaving me frustrated to understand quite why some of the characters reached the point they did. Lydia's reactions were certain very odd and unrealistic - veering from reclusive and private with the man she’s been living with the for last few years to immediately opening up to a long-lost childhood friend who coincidentally happens along just when things in her life are getting confused. I don’t buy the lack of wariness that Lydia showed...
But clever, and with promise - I can see the potential in the author, and this is, after all, his debut work.
+10 Task
+10 Review
Book total = 20
Season total = 605
Task 20.5 - OldIstanbul by Bettany Hughes
98% set over 100 yrs ago; only the last couple of chapters touch on more recent events
800 pages
A brilliant look at the history of Byzantium, Constantinople and Istanbul - a unique city with multiple identities over the millennia.
I'm a sucker for this sort of history - if it weren't for the fact that we cover thousands of years and a dizzying array of characters and events you could almost call it a microhistory. Let's call it a biography of the city.
And actually, biography isn't far wrong, as the city does become a distinct character, growing and changing and yes, diminishing, over the course of history.
Hughes is passionate about the city, and that comes out very clearly in every description of Istanbul, and the excitement that archaeological discoveries are still turning up new insights into this complex city (oldest wooden coffin!) She uses modern events to compare, contrast and highlight similarities and differences in society, in a way that makes even ancient history seem relevant.
At the end of the book she makes the sad point that we view other ancient civilisations very differently - ancient Rome, ancient Greece, ancient Egypt are all treated very differently to this city which occupies a unique place in the geopolitical landscape. Certainly I am now desperate to go and visit Istanbul!
+20 Task
+15 Jumbo
+10 Not a Novel (non-fiction)
+10 Review
+5 Combo 10.8
Book total = 60
Season total = 585
oh! awesome! Thank you! :)
oh no! disaster!I've just finished Istanbul and was getting ready to report it when I noticed that the default ed has a page count about half of the other eds. (430ish compared to 830ish)
woe is me!
do I have to sacrifice by jumbo points, or can we decide that the outlier edition is wrong?
(I can guess the answer, but hope springs eternal...)
15.10 - Reading GloballySetting: Virgin Islands, British
Swimming with the Dead by Kathy Brandt
+40 task
+15 first visitor
+100 A-Z completion
+100 7 continents
Post total = 255
Season total = 515
