Kim’s Comments (group member since Nov 20, 2020)

Kim’s comments from the Reading with Style group.

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Kim wrote: "I've already used 10.4, so I'll find another book to put here."

It's OK. You can repeat tasks at will. There is no loss of points.

Yes, the Square Peg is a book that won't fit anywher..."

Oh, wow - I didn't realize you could repeat tasks, other than NotG. Cool!

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Post 823 Kim wrote: "10.1 Square Peg
Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Contrary to the 94% of people who liked or loved this book, it did not work for me..."

Ah, I was looking at it as a free square, but it sounds like the strategy is to find a book that couldn't fit anywhere else. I've already used 10.4, so I'll find another book to put here.

So my score would be 1925 (1960-35) at this point?

15.10 Name of the Game
D: A Tale of Two Worlds by Michel Faber

H - 12D - Hot off the press (pub'd Dec. 2020)
I - 10C - Character is an instructor (teacher, university faculty)
T - 14D - Title words of To, Too, or Two
Word: Hit
Task: 45
Completion: 100 points
Using 3 or more 4 letter words: 100 points (Ring, Ethyl, Then)
Task total: 245
Season Total: 1960

10.1; 10.2; 10.3; 10.4; 10.5; 10.6; 10.7; ....; 10.9; 10.10
15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; 15.6; 15.7; 15.8; 15.9; 15.10 (3x)
20.1; 20.2; .....; 20.4; 20.5; 20.6; 20.7; 20.8; 20.9; 20.10

15.9 Name of the Game
One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow by Olivia Hawker

T- 11B- Pub'd in the Teens - any century (2019)
H- 12C- Author's first or last name begins with H
E- 3D- A book with an 8 (or better) word title.
N- 7D- Title has a number (all forms)

Word: Then
Task total: 30
Season Total: 1715

10.1; 10.2; 10.3; 10.4; 10.5; 10.6; 10.7; ....; 10.9; 10.10
15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; 15.6; 15.7; 15.8; 15.9; .... (3x)
20.1; 20.2; .....; 20.4; 20.5; 20.6; 20.7; 20.8; 20.9; 20.10

10.4 Valentines
Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Contrary to the 94% of people who liked or loved this book, it did not work for me. Well, a few things did. The title is cute, and I like the cover. There were about 50 pages in the middle that really felt good (where the families were supporting Alex and Henry). I thought the quotes from literature and such that they put in each email were cool.
What I didn't like about it: I found it not believable that a 21 year old man doesn't understand his sexuality. I could buy that he knew, but didn't want to come out, but to wake up one morning and say "omg, I'm bisexual" doesn't ring true for me (but what do I know?). Also, after all the political turmoil of the last few years, the last thing I am interested in is political party bashing. Done, period. I was fine with the "we are progressive, electing a woman, who's divorced and remarried, and has biracial children," but in the last chapters where they turn the other party into a monster, just no. I don't care if it was the DNP or the RNP, we need to stop this hate, it just continues to tear people apart.
Task: 10
Review: 10
Prizeworthy - 15 ALA Alex Award (2020), Goodreads Choice Award for Romance and for Debut Novel (2019), Bisexual Book Awards for Romance (joint winner) (2019)
Task total: 35
Season Total: 1685

10.1; 10.2; 10.3; 10.4; 10.5; 10.6; 10.7; ....; 10.9; 10.10
15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; 15.6; 15.7; 15.8; ....; .... (3x)
20.1; 20.2; .....; 20.4; 20.5; 20.6; 20.7; 20.8; 20.9; 20.10

Books like 1776 or 1st to Die - would we consider starting with S and F?

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Kim wrote: "20.5 Africa
Review:
4.0/5.0 - This books started out as a 5.0 for the first half, the middle really dragged, the ending was good, so a 4 star all in all. This was a book that I had to..."

Well, I'm glad my terrible reviews are at least good enough for you to tell what the book is when I forget the title. Thanks, I fixed it.

Does A Well-Behaved Woman: A Novel of the Vanderbilts work?

20.5 Africa
Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
Review:
4.0/5.0 - This books started out as a 5.0 for the first half, the middle really dragged, the ending was good, so a 4 star all in all. This was a book that I had to stop and take notes on throughout. I am ashamed to say I knew nothing about apartheid before reading this, and just have the most basic understanding now. One way to describe it is institutionalized racism within a police state, where blacks are forced to live in ghettos, and language is used as a barrier. By that I mean, each tribe (Zula, Xhosa, and many others) are forced to speak only their dialect, in essence creating a Tower of Babel situation. In South Africa during Trevor's childhood, there were 3 or 4 races. There were blacks, whites, colored and mixed. I'm not sure of the distinction between the last two, though. Colored was when a black man or woman had a child with white man or woman. That was Trevor's case, his father was German/Swiss, his mother South African. But he calls himself colored as opposed to mixed.
Trevor's mother was a strong, religious woman who raised him "as a white kid" (p.73), which is to say to believe in and speak up for himself, and to know that his ideas, thoughts and decisions mattered. She drummed into him from the time he was a small boy how to treat women with respect.
A couple of notes of things that stayed with me. Page 110 - "Being chosen is the greatest gift you can give another human being." (Trevor speaking of meeting back up with his father when he is a young man).
There were a couple of places in this book that reminded me of other books I have recently read. For example, in the chapter "The Mulberry Tree," he talks about how races can be promoted or demoted - an Indian might be considered colored, a colored person could be "promoted" to white, depending on the whim of the government official. I kept thinking about the chapter in Hawaii where the Japanese unit is training in the United States during World War II, and in some ways they are treated as negroes, and in other ways as whites. Parable of the Sower also came to mind, when he described neighborhoods in Johannesburg where "virtually every house sits behind a six-foot wall, with electric wire on top (p. 151)."
I found his statement that Germany teaches about the holocaust and England teaches about colonialism apologetically, but South Africa teaches about apartheid the same way America teaches about racism - it happened, get over it.
This is a book that made we think and weep and I hope taught me something. One thing that I did not understand at all, though, is its classification as humor, and the fact that it won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. I didn't find anything humorous about this book.
Task: 20
Review: 10
Combo: Combo - 10.4 & 10.6 [2017] - 10
Prizeworthy - 10 NAACP Image Award for Debut Author and for Biography / Auto-biography (2017), Thurber Prize for American Humor (2017)
Task total: 50
Season Total: 1650

...; 10.2; 10.3; 10.4; 10.5; 10.6; 10.7; ....; 10.9; 10.10
15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; 15.6; 15.7; 15.8; ....; .... (3x)
20.1; 20.2; .....; 20.4; 20.5; 20.6; 20.7; 20.8; 20.9; 20.10

20.1 - Home

20.2 - Commonwealth by Ann Patchett or Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler

20.3 - The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace or Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers or The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

20.4 - Postmortem by Patricia D. Cornwell

20.5 - People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

20.6 - The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

20.7 - To Capture What We Cannot Keep or Resistance Women

For the Square Peg task, can you still get the style points for Review/translation/prize and jumbo?

10.10 Group Reads

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

3.5/5.0 - It dragged in the middle, but had a strong finish. I found Cyril, the father, and Danny, the son to be kind of clueless men, who don't listen well to others, especially their wives. Both of them buy a house and present it to their wives, without getting their input at all. Who does that? So many secrets are kept and then revealed in the end.
I heard an interview with the author today and here are a few interesting things she said. Originally she had planned to title the book "Maeve" but decided that because it really set the tone for the rest of the book, she changed it to be The Dutch House, as that was the main character. The other thing that hit home with me was her description of literary fiction versus commercial fiction. The first leaves you wondering about the characters and the latter wraps everything up and ties it with a bow.
Task: 10
Combo 10.7: 5
Review: 10
Task total: 25

Season Total: 1600

...; 10.2; 10.3; 10.4; 10.5; 10.6; 10.7; ....; 10.9; 10.10
15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; 15.6; 15.7; 15.8; ....; .... (3x)
20.1; 20.2; .....; 20.4; .....; 20.6; 20.7; 20.8; 20.9; 20.10

10.9 The Fifth Season (Ann's Task)
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

5.0/5.0 - I'm always pleased when a book that I pick for a challenge, one that I would not normally have grabbed off a shelf, turns out to be so good. This author was not on my radar, the genre - dystopian science fiction, would never be a first choice for me, yet I was drawn in from the very beginning. The book takes place is the near future, 2025, when society has broken down due to extreme poverty, climate change, drugs, and the lack of education and well paying jobs. Communities survive behind walls, but are always subject to attack. Lauren is 15 when the story opens. She lives with her father, a Baptist minister and college professor, her stepmother, who also holds a PhD, but stays at home to care for her family and teach the local community, and four brothers. She can see where things are headed and decides to prepare herself for a future where she must survive and thrive on her own. For years, she has been thinking about what she wants her future to look like, and has written her thoughts in a book she calls Earthseed: The Books of the Living. She learns all she can, she packs a bug-out bag, and when the time comes, she escapes the night of madness. Slowly, she starts building the community of earthseed, along the road, with other survivors. Community and change, traveling to the stars - these are the principles in which she believes. How successful will her new community be? I guess you'll have to read Parable of the Talents to find out.

Review: 10
Task: 10
Combo - 20 (10.5 & 10.7 & 20.1 & 20.3)
Task total: 40
Season Total: 1575

...; 10.2; 10.3; 10.4; 10.5; 10.6; 10.7; ....; 10.9; .....
15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; 15.6; 15.7; 15.8; ....; .... (3x)
20.1; 20.2; .....; 20.4; .....; 20.6; 20.7; 20.8; 20.9; 20.10

15.8 Name of the Game

Notorious Nineteen by Janet Evanovich
(GR seems to be not working to add books, I'll fix this when the site works.)

Square 9D - letter E– Wild Card!
Square 11C - letter T–MPG: Thriller
Square 12E - letter H– Highly Rated: Read a book rated 5 stars by another RwS member (Cassie rated 5)
Square 15D - letter Y– MPG: Mystery
Square 16B - letter L– Literature Map: See links to the right (Agatha Christie)

Word = ETHYL
Task: 30

Season Total: 1535

...; 10.2; 10.3; 10.4; 10.5; 10.6; 10.7; ....; .....; .....
15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; 15.6; 15.7; 15.8; ....; .... (3x)
20.1; 20.2; .....; 20.4; .....; 20.6; 20.7; 20.8; 20.9; 20.10

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Kim wrote: "Could someone explain on the Readerboard how the The Most Strategic Reader is determined? I see my name (Kim - 38.9, for 36 Books), but I have no idea what the 38.9 signifies. And for T..."

Thank you for this great explanation. I looked around various places, but couldn't find it anywhere.

Could someone explain on the Readerboard how the The Most Strategic Reader is determined? I see my name (Kim - 38.9, for 36 Books), but I have no idea what the 38.9 signifies. And for The Group Lead Reader does the X/Y books mean X= # that are translations, Y = # of books posted?
Thanks so much!

15.7 Name of the Game

The Fairies of Sadieville by Alex Bledsoe

Square 16D - letter L– An author's last or most recent novel (book)
Square 6D - letter I– Author name has no letter I
Square 14E - letter E– Novel has Eight or more named characters

Word = LIE
Task: 20

Season Total: 1505

...; 10.2; 10.3; 10.4; 10.5; 10.6; 10.7; ....; .....; .....
15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; 15.6; 15.7; ....; ....; .... (3x)
20.1; 20.2; .....; 20.4; .....; 20.6; 20.7; 20.8; 20.9; 20.10

15.6 Name of the Game

Emma: A Modern Retelling by Alexander McCall Smith

Square 2D - letter R– A Re-Telling
Square 4C - letter A– Author born in August
Square 14E - letter T– Title includes the name of a character.

Word = RAT
Task: 20

Season Total: 1485

...; 10.2; 10.3; 10.4; 10.5; 10.6; 10.7; ....; .....; .....
15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; 15.6; ....; ....; ....; .... (3x)
20.1; 20.2; .....; 20.4; .....; 20.6; 20.7; 20.8; 20.9; 20.10

20.9 Nieces (Kate S's Task)
A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Review:
4.0/5.0 - I did not expect to like this, paranormal and vampires not being my thing, so I was surprised at how quickly it pulled me in. It probably helped that it started out in the Bodleian Library (aka Oxford University Library), and that in my past life, as an Interlibrary Loan librarian, I used to occasionally get books from there. So immediately, I was drawn into the setting. The main characters, Diana, a witch who doesn't wish to use her powers, and Matthew, a very powerful vampire, who revels in his, are attracted to each other despite their desires not to be. Throughout the book, they grow, as creatures and lovers, Diana becoming much stronger, and Matthew, becoming less secretive and slowly opening little by little to Diana. Secrets are revealed, families are introduced and enlarged, and the book leaves both satisfied and set up for the next book in the series.
Task: 20
Review: 10
Combo: 15 (20.4 - MC is scientist & 10.5 is historian author & 10.3- Deborah)
Jumbo: 5 (579 pages)
Prize: 5 (SCIBA Award for fiction)
Task total: 55
Season Total: 1465

...; 10.2; 10.3; 10.4; 10.5; 10.6; 10.7; ....; .....; .....
15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; ....; ....; ....; ....; .... (3x)
20.1; 20.2; .....; 20.4; .....; 20.6; 20.7; 20.8; 20.9; 20.10

15.5 Name of the Game

Call the Midwife: Shadows of the Workhouse by Jennifer Worth

Square 5E - letter D– Double Trouble: Title or author name has consecutive letters that are the same
Square 3B - letter E– Author entire published name has 2 or more E's
Square 9B - letter W– Author first or last name begins with W

Word = Dew
Task: 20
Not a Novel: 5
Season Total: 1410

...; 10.2; 10.3; 10.4; 10.5; 10.6; 10.7; ....; .....; .....
15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; ....; ....; ....; ....; .... (3x)
20.1; 20.2; .....; 20.4; .....; 20.6; 20.7; 20.8; .....; .20.10