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Showing 301-320 of 1,904
15.6 Celebration of StylesEvil Eye by Etaf Rum
Young - author's birth date is May 8, 1989, age 34
(https://allfamousbirthday.com/etaf-rum/ included in help thread)
Task total: 15
Season total: 375
15.5 Celebration of StylesYoung - born in 1980
Songbirds by Christy Lefteri
Task total: 15
Season total: 360
15.4 Celebration of StylesNot-a-Novel
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom by August Wilson
+15 task (play)
Task total: 15
Season total: 345
20.10 LettersThe Caretaker by Ron Rash
Naomi wrote letters to Jacob when he was a soldier in Korea.
Blackburn Gant is a young man who was disfigured by childhood polio. He lives by himself in a cottage at the town's cemetery where he is the caretaker. Blackburn has a good friend in town, Jacob Hampton, the only son of a prosperous family. Jacob was disinherited when he eloped with Naomi, a marriage that his parents considered to be under their social status.
When Jacob is drafted to serve in the Korean War, he asks Blackburn to help the pregnant Naomi until he returns from the military. After Jacob is discharged with war injuries, his cruel parents cook up a plan to destroy their son's marriage.
This is a story about friendship, love, loyalty, and small town living in the 1950s. Ron Rash's writing is superb, and the book's opening pages on the ice of a Korean river are unforgettable. Blackburn Gant is a wonderful character -- a dependable, capable loner that carries on despite the challenges life throws at him. As always, Ron Rash has such insight into human nature and wonderful descriptions of the Appalachian region of North Carolina. "The Caretaker" is one of my favorite reads of the year!
+20 task
+10 review
+ 5 multiple
Task total: 35
Season total: 330
20.2 WarThe Golden Doves by Martha Hall Kelly
Josie and Arlette worked for the French Resistance during World War II, transmitting valuable information to the Allied Command in London. They were known as the Golden Doves in Paris before their work was discovered and they were sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp. Cruel medical experiments were performed on many women in the camp, and babies were neglected, including Arlette's baby son.
The book alternates between the 1940s war years and the 1950s for each of the two characters. Arlette is trying to follow leads that her son might be alive in a boys camp in French Guiana. Josie works for the American government locating former Nazis, including some valuable scientists. There is a secret intelligence program, Operation Paperclip, that is recruiting former Nazi scientists and engineers to prevent them from giving their knowledge to the Russians in the Cold War years. Other Nazis traveled from Germany through the Alps into Italy on their way to safe havens in South America, avoiding justice.
The book has a large number of characters so it's not one that you could put down for a couple weeks and then return to it. The story is suspenseful, although the spying by Josie sometimes seemed a little sloppy for a trained Army intelligence officer. Overall, it's very good historical fiction that gives important information about the French Resistance, the ordeals of Ravensbrück, and the outcomes of many former Nazi officials.
+20 task
+10 review
+ 5 multiple
+ 5 jumbo (528 pages)
Task total: 40
Season total: 295
20.1 Author! Author!The Push by Ashley Audrain
Blythe comes from a family line of women who neglect and abuse their children, and lack warm maternal feelings. She's a short story author who lets her daughter cry for hours in her crib while she works. So when Blythe's preschool daughter, Violet, is suspected of causing harm to a toddler, we wonder if it is nature or nurture that is responsible for her behavior.
"The Push" is written mostly in second person as a manuscript for Blythe to give to her ex-husband. She's hoping that he will open his eyes and stop ignoring Violet's behavior. But Blythe herself is disturbed so she might be an unreliable narrator. Blythe is dealing with childhood trauma, the breakup of her marriage, and grief.
Ashley Audrain wrote a gripping psychological suspense story. "The Push" is about the darker side of motherhood and childhood where a parent fears what her own child might be capable of doing.
+20 task (Blythe is a short story author)
+10 review
Task total: 30
Season total: 255
15.3 Celebration of StylesYoung - Author was born 12/11/79, age 43
It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover
Task total: 15
Season total: 225
20.2 WarBook has both war and historical fiction as genres.
Hannah's War by Jan Eliasberg
Dr Hannah Weiss, an Austrian Jew who escaped from Nazi Germany, loves her work in science but has ethical concerns about the atomic bomb being developed in 1945 Los Alamos. A petition had been circulated about the danger of the weapon, leading the OSS to send investigators to determine if information was being leaked to the Nazis. Major Jack Delaney was sent to interrogate Hannah, and she finds that he is also hiding secrets about his past.
The story switches from Los Alamos, New Mexico to Nazi Germany in flashbacks. Hannah had not received the recognition she deserved in Germany before she defected because she was a woman and a Jew.
The book is a riveting story written by screenwriter Jan Eliasberg, and would be a wonderful film. Hannah and Jack are playing a cat and mouse game as secrets about their identities are slowly revealed, and they try to ignore their mutual attraction. Although the two main characters are fictional, there are real supporting characters such as Dr J. Robert Oppenheimer. "Hannah's War" is a page-turner about the race to build the bomb, and the hope that it would never have to be used.
+20 task
+10 review
Task total: 30
Season total: 210
15.2 Celebration of StylesAged: Author was 92 years old. (Dec 13, 1925-March 24, 2018)
The Widow's Trial by John Ehle
Task total: 15
Season total: 180
10.4 DebutAmazing Grace Adams by Fran Littlewood
I had mixed feelings when reading about Grace Adams, a perimenopausal language teacher with a disintegrating marriage and a challenging relationship with her fifteen-year-old daughter. The book has a good portrayal of Grace's teenage daughter who is over her head in social media and involved in a toxic relationship.
By the time a flashback tells us about a heartbreaking event that Grace has faced, we've wondered for most of the book why Grace is often out of control. For example, the book begins with Grace just abandoning her car in the middle lane of a highway because traffic is not moving, she's having hot flashes, and she needs to pick up a cake.
"Amazing Grace Adams" is a story about a woman who is very troubled by the past, and having difficulty coping with life. The reader can feel her pain, but also feel frustrated by the choices she makes. It sometimes only takes one misstep to change a life from amazing to broken, and it's a long road back toward hope and recovery.
+10 task
+10 review
Task total: 20
Season total: 165
20.10 LettersGo as a River by Shelley Read
Inga wrote a letter to Victoria, and Victoria wrote back to Inga.
Victoria Nash's life changes when she meets a Native American stranger, Wil Moon, on her way home. She lives on her family's peach farm in Iola, Colorado. The attraction is strong between Wil and Victoria, but racism is very prevalent in 1945.
"My home is at the bottom of a lake. Our farm lies there, mud bound, its remnants indistinguishable from boat wreckage. Sleek trout troll the remains of my bedroom and the parlor where we sat as a family on Sundays."
The government builds a dam and floods the town of Iola. There is loss of community and people's livelihoods. Nature is a potent healer as Victoria rebuilds and recovers from personal and business losses.
"Go as a River" is a coming-of-age novel about loss, heartache, resilience, survival, friendship, and family. It demonstrates the damage left by war, bigotry, and a lack of equality for women. The lovely setting in the western Colorado mountains is an important element in the story. Although we pass many obstacles in the long, meandering journey of life, Wil said it was important to "go as a river."
+20 task
+ 5 multiple
+10 review
Task total: 35
Season total: 145
15.1 Celebration of StylesYoung - author born in 1986, age 37
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
Task total: 15
Season total: 110
20.10 LettersLetter From Home by Carolyn G. Hart
Gretchen Gilman, a world-famous journalist, received a letter from her childhood friend, Barb. It brought back memories of the summer of 1944 when Gretchen had her first job working for the newspaper in her small Oklahoma hometown. The letter also reminded her of the violent death of a neighbor and some soldiers who never returned from the war. Gretchen was a good friend to Barb over the summer when Barb's life was falling apart.
The book revolves around a murder that shocked the townspeople, the gossip and speculation about the victim, and Gretchen's roles as a novice reporter and a friend. I enjoyed this novel as a thoughtful coming-of-age story, as well as a realistic mystery that won the Agatha Award.
+20 task (Barb wrote a letter to Gretchen)
+10 review
+ 5 prize-worthy (Agatha Award for Best Novel 2003)
Task total: 35
Season total: 75
20.7 ChristieA Fugue in Time by Rumer Godden
"A Fugue in Time" is an experimental novel where Rumer Godden interweaves the lives of three generations of a family in a London house. It's similar to the way that themes in a fugue repeat and intertwine. The author pretends that she is in an airplane over the house watching everything that has happened during a 99-year lease of the home. The book is mostly written in the present tense, but it's not confusing after the reader knows when the various characters were born and died.
The characters are very well-written, especially the smart, talented female characters restrained by society's expectations. Griselda is presented in depth as a Victorian woman trapped by her role of the wife and the mother of a large family, but wanting to see the world beyond her family. Many of the servants are the young relatives of the older servants so there is continuity there too.
The large house is an important character - a solid shelter that has seen it all and knows everyone's memories and secrets. There is a garden with a plane tree whose roots run under the house. The youngest son, Rolls, thinks of himself as part of the plane tree with his roots also attached to the house. He's haunted by memories of what could have been, and wondering what will come next when the 99-year lease ends.
I enjoyed reading a book that plays with time in an experimental way. I've loved Rumer Godden's characterizations in her other books, and this was no exception. I'm planning on reading several more of her novels in the coming year.
+20 task (over 99 years)
+10 review
+10 oldie (pub 1945)
Task total: 40
Season total: 60
10.3 VowelsNothing More Dangerous by Allen Eskens
"Nothing More Dangerous" combines mystery, historical fiction, and coming-of-age to create a riveting read. Boady Sanden is a fifteen-year-old freshman at high school who is saving money to leave his hometown of Jessup, Missouri in the Ozarks in the late 1970s. He's being bullied by Jarvis Holcombe, an athlete at his school, and his two buddies. Jarvis is not happy about Boady's new neighbors, the black Elgin family, moving into town. Charles Elgin has been sent by management to do the supervisory job that Jarvis' father used to perform before there was an embezzlement at the firm and a black woman disappeared. The Holcombes are members of a white supremacist group, the CORPS - Crusaders of Racial Purity and Strength.
Another neighbor, Hoke Gardner, has been a father substitute for Boady since his father died when Boady was five years old. Hoke is a former attorney with a mysterious past. Hoke informs Boady that people are divided into "us" and "them" along lines of race, class, religion, etc which leads to stereotypes and prejudice.
While Boady and his new neighbor, Thomas Elgin, are out camping in the woods, they discover something shocking that sets up a series of dangerous and violent events. "Nothing More Dangerous" is a well-written book full of suspense with an important message at its core.
+10 task
+10 review
Task total: 20
Season total: 20
Congratulations to Don! Enjoy the gift card!
Goodreads Choice Awards Nominees will give you 20 books that were nominated for the given year. You can choice the year and the type of award on the left side of the page (on a desktop screen).https://www.goodreads.com/choiceaward...
