Connie ’s
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(group member since Nov 11, 2013)
Connie ’s
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from the Reading with Style group.
Showing 281-300 of 1,905
20.9 Fresh StartA Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
+20 task (New job--Women were not allowed to work under the Taliban in Afghanistan. In the post-Taliban era, the well-educated Laila went to work teaching at an orphanage school.)
+ 5 combo 20.4 Othello (Laila was pregnant with another man's child when she married Rasheed, and passed off the baby as his.)
Task total: 25
Season total: 70
10.9 Summer, Not WinterHomecoming by Kate Morton
+10 task (set in Australia)
+ 5 combo 10.2 Singular Mystery
+ 5 combo 20.4 Othello (view spoiler)
+10 female author
+ 5 jumbo (547 pages)
Task total: 35
Season total: 45
Thanks to the moderators for another great season! I appreciate all the time Elizabeth and Kate put in for so many years. Thanks to Rosemary, Anika, and Joanna for stepping up to continue the group.
20.1 Author, AuthorThe Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
"Tristram Shandy" is one of the most unusual books I've ever read. Author Laurence Sterne was writing in the 18th Century, but he was using the technique of stream of consciousness that we usually associate with the modernists and postmodernists. The book has lots of bawdy humor so it's difficult to imagine that Sterne was an Anglican clergyman. Sterne was well-educated, and there are many references to the great minds of the time and to other literary works. The novel contains unusual visual techniques such as marbled and blank pages. Sterne loves to play with time, and the novel is full of digressions. The author's humor was influenced by Cervantes, Swift, Rabelias, and other earlier writers.
The characters in the book have obsessions (called "hobby-horses"). Tristram's father loves to quote philosophers, but often exhibits little common sense. His Uncle Toby is a military veteran who reenacts battles on his lawn with the help of his servant. Tristram is trying to outrun Death in the later chapters, battling the same tubercular disease as Sterne. He's using humor and fun so he can avoid thinking about his declining health. Tristram is an author who is writing the story of his life, including his European travels.
This is not a book for everyone because it's filled with double entendres and digressions -- and digressions from the digressions! I feel that it would be most appreciated in an academic class, or in a group led by someone knowledgeable about Sterne's writing. I've finished the book, but feel lucky to have been part of an ongoing discussion group that made reading "Tristram Shandy" an enjoyable reading experience.
+20 task (Tristram is an author)
+10 review
+ 5 multiple
+20 oldie (1767)
+10 jumbo (735 pages)
Task total: 65
Season total: 735
15.10 Celebration of StylesRefuge by Dot Jackson
Aged - age 84 (1932-2016 see message 35 on Q&A thread)
Task total: 15
Finisher bonus: 100
Season total: 670
15.9 Celebration of StylesAll Through the Night by Mary Higgins Clark
Aged - age 93 (1927-2020)
Task total: 15
Season total: 555
15.8 Celebration of StylesKingfishers Catch Fire by Rumer Godden
Aged - author lived to age 91 (1907-1998)
Task total: 15
Season total: 540
Planning Ideas10.1 Square Peg
10.2 Singular Mystery
✓ No Exit by Taylor Adams
Loyalty by Lisa Scottoline
✓ 10.3 New Year's Traditions (India)
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
10.4 Leap Year (100-150 pages)
✓ The Battle of Life by Charles Dickens
10.5 Jewish Writers
I Am the Clay or Old Men at Midnight: Stories by Chaim Potok
10.6 Winter Birthdays
10.7 Feasting
Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes by Elizabeth Bard
10.8 Fairytale of New York (Pub 1982-1996)
J is for Judgment by Sue Grafton (1993)
10.9 Summer, Not Winter (Southern Hemisphere)
✓ Homecoming by Kate Morton (Australia)
10.10 Group Reads
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
20.1 Shakespeare (book title references a play or quote)
Make Death Love Me by Ruth Rendell
Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy
The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck
Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
20.2 A Midsummer Night's Dream (top 150 of Wise Woman. . . list)
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
Midwives by Chris Bohjalian
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
20.3 The Tempest (winners of British Fantasy Award)
Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce
20.4 Othello (hidden identity)
The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart
20.5 King John to Henry VIII (set or pub between 1199-1547)
✓ The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (set in 1327)
Dissolution by C.J. Sansom (set in 1537)
20.6 The Sonnets (book of poetry)
Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems by Thomas Hardy and Tim Armstrong
20.7 The Wild Life
The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather
Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt
Leopard at the Door by Jennifer McVeigh
20.8 The Big 5-0 (memoir lists)
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan
20.9 Fresh Start (new city, house, or job)
✓ A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
✓ The Brightest Star by Gail Tsukiyama
20.10 Boxing Day (servants, the poor, the underclass)
Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift
The Madonnas of Echo Park by Brando Skyhorse
Two Trains Running by August Wilson
Thanks, Rosemary.
Does the Lexile rule apply to the subchallenge (and also the RwS challenge) during the winter?
Plan - Determined Route:✓ 1. Portland - Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
✓ 2. Salt Lake City - The Heather Blazing by Colm Tóibín
✓ 3. Helena - The Measure by Nikki Erlick
✓ 4. Omaha - After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell
✓ 5. Chicago - The Overnight Guest by Heather Gudenkauf
✓ 6. Pittsburgh - China Court: The Hours of a Country House by Rumer Godden
✓ 7. St Louis - Moving On by Sara Steger
✓ 8. Kansas City - Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie
✓ 9. Oklahoma City - Charming Billy by Alice McDermott
✓ 10. El Paso - The Air Raid Book Club by Annie Lyons Or Loyalty by Lisa Scottoline
20.8 MorrisonLet Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward
Jesmyn Ward depicts the horror of slavery in a world haunted with spirits using imaginative lyrical prose. The title comes from Dante's Inferno - "Let us descend and enter this blind world" - and the story tells about a hell on earth.
Teenager Annis is the daughter of a North Carolina plantation owner father and a slave mother. Her grandmother was a warrior in Africa, and her mother passed down her knowledge of fighting and resilience to Annis. Their enslaver sells her mother first, and Annis later, to be marched on a long journey to the slave markets of New Orleans. The grief of separation, and the physical pain of the journey with the slaves roped together are overwhelming. Annis turns to the spirits of her ancestors and the spirits in nature. It is a way of coping to create another reality. Annis uses her own strength and the help of the spirits in her struggles.
The first person narration by Annis adds to the intensity of the story. The descriptions involve all the senses so the reader gets a vivid picture. The connection with the spirit world worked well in this story, but I would have preferred less magical realism. The spirits gave Annis encouragement when it seemed like she had no one in the real world. The spirits in nature - the earth, the rain, the wind, and the water - lead Annis to a more hopeful place. This is an emotionally difficult book to read because of its subject, but Ward's writing is beautiful.
+20 task
+10 review
Task total: 30
Season total: 525
10.7 ScrabbleThe Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry
36 points in Scrabble scoring
"Not that long ago and not so far away, in a land that is right here," Hazel whispered into the dark, "there was a place where anything could happen, where we might become anything we wish, where a river of stars runs through its woodlands. Keep your eyes open for hidden doorways! They're everywhere, but visible only to those who are worthy. And we are worthy."
Fourteen-year-old Hazel created Whisperwood, a fairy tale world, to amuse and comfort her five-year-old sister, Flora. The two sisters were sent away to the countryside around Oxford in 1939 to keep them safe during the bombing of London. This was part of Operation Pied Piper, and the girls were lucky to stay with Bridie Aberdeen and her son in a beautiful pastoral location. Then Flora disappeared by a river, but she was never found.
Hazel had been living with grief and guilt, and had tried to find Flora for twenty years. A package came into the bookstore where Hazel worked that contained a fairy tale book composed of variations on the Whisperwood stories that Hazel created. This led to connections to important people in Hazel's childhood, and clues about Flora's disappearance.
"The Secret Book of Flora Lea" is a charming combination of fairy tales, mystery, romance, and historical fiction. Whisperwood is a magical place which reflects the author's interest in fairy tales. (She also wrote about C.S. Lewis.) The book does swing into the sweet zone sometimes, a quality that seems to fit with its themes of fairy tales, the magic of love, and the bond between sisters.
+10 task
+10 review
Task total: 20
Season total: 495
Rosemary wrote: "Post 533 Connie wrote: "20.8 MorrisonFences by August Wilson
"Fences" is the August Wilson play set in the 1950s in his ten-part "Century Cycle" about the experience..."
Thank you, Rosemary. 10.3 sounds good to me.
20.8 MorrisonFences by August Wilson
"Fences" is the August Wilson play set in the 1950s in his ten-part "Century Cycle" about the experiences of African-Americans. The main character is Troy, an illiterate but very hard working trash collector in Pittsburgh. Troy was an excellent baseball player when he was younger, but he never realized his dream of making it to Major League Baseball because he was too old when he was released after a fifteen-year prison sentence. Racial discrimination was also prevalent in MLB, although the color barrier was starting to be broken. The play revolves around Troy's relationships with his wife, his two sons, his best friend, and his brother.
Conversations give us Troy's past history as the son of a stern, abusive father. Troy is a flawed man with a severe parenting style with no room for listening to his children's dreams - although he loved them in his own way. The epigraph of the play, poetry written by Wilson, is about the influence of fathers:
"When the sins of our fathers visit us
We do not have to play host.
We can banish them with forgiveness
As God, in His Largeness and Laws."
"Fences" was a good choice as a title for the play. A fence can keep people out or enclose people in, emotionally and physically. That symbol is used many times in the play regarding relationships, Troy's time in prison, the baseball field, as a barrier from the Grim Reaper, and representing racial discrimination.
I saw the 2016 movie years ago featuring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis which has excellent dramatic acting. Even just reading the play is a fine experience because Wilson's writing is so good. "Fences" won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 1987 Tony Award for Best Play.
+20 task
+10 review
+10 prize-worthy (Pulitzer, and New York Drama Critics awards)
+ 5 oldie (1986)
Task total: 45
Season total: 480
10.2 Moon and SunThe Half Moon by Mary Beth Keane
Malcolm Gephardt, a charming man with the gift of gab, has been a popular bartender at the Half Moon in his hometown of Gillam in the Hudson Valley. It was his lifelong dream to own his own bar so he made a deal for the Half Moon when the owner retired. Unfortunately, he did not consult a lawyer.
His wife, Jess, is a lawyer who also has a big dream. She has had a series of miscarriages, has undergone fertility treatments, and desperately wants a baby. The bar is not doing well financially, the fertility treatments were costly, and Jess has large student loans. There are problems in their marriage, and they both experience disappointment.
A huge blizzard hits the area as they are trying to decide what is important, and deal with family problems. A subplot plays out for one of the bar's customers.
Malcolm and Jess seemed very realistic as characters. A reader could feel for both characters, but also wonder if they had thought through their decisions. The story had a small town flavor where everyone knows everyone's business, but people also have long-term friendships. The first half of the book moved slowly, but it picked up when the blizzard and the subplot were introduced in the second half.
+10 task
+10 review
+ 5 multiple
Task total: 25
Season total: 435
Congrats on finishing such a large challenge, Elizabeth!
10.2 Moon and SunGinny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig
Author Benjamin Ludwig is the adoptive father of an autistic teenager. In interviews he said that he developed the voice of Ginny Moon, an autistic character, from conversations he heard at Special Olympics, and from his experience teaching school. Ginny's voice is very obsessive, often humorous, and very believable. It's her obsession - and her unusual way of stating it - that causes a big misunderstanding between her and her "Forever Parents," and drives the plot.
Ginny's "Forever Parents" are having their first biological child soon, and Ginny is practicing being a big sister with a plastic electronic doll which cries. This brings back memories of Ginny's early years with her abusive birth mother. The book is narrated by Ginny and her inner thoughts are revealed to the reader. We recognize her distress when the fourteen-year-old autistic girl has trouble communicating her concerns to other people.
It's best not to know too much about the storyline before reading the book. Ginny is a wonderful complex character that we can care about. It's also easy to understand the pressures felt by her adoptive parents. The book is told in short chapters and is hard to put down. Highly recommended!
+10 task
+10 review
Task total: 20
Season total: 410
