Connie ’s Comments (group member since Nov 11, 2013)

Connie ’s comments from the Reading with Style group.

Thanks, Anika and Rosemary, for joining Joanna as moderators. You're a terrific trio, and I'm sure you'll do a great job!

10.10 Summertime

Title begins with the 6th, 7th, 8th letter of the alphabet (F, G, H)

Hang the Moon by Jeannette Walls

Task total: 10
Finisher bonus: 100
Season total: 565

10.9 Summertime

Author first/last name begins with the 6th, 7th, 8th letter of the alphabet (F, G, H).

The Lieutenant by Kate Grenville

Task total: 10
Season total: 455

10.3 Summertime

Number of words in subtitle. (8)

The Sun Is a Compass: A 4,000-Mile Journey into the Alaskan Wilds by Caroline Van Hemert

Task total: 10
Season total: 445

I would like to lock in Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love which has a rating of 3.75 now.

Planning Ideas:

10.1 Over 60
The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence

10.2 Moon and Sun
✓ Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig
✓ The Half Moon by Mary Beth Keane

10.3 Vowels
✓ Nothing More Dangerous by Allen Eskens

10.4 Debut
✓ Amazing Grace Adams by Fran Littlewood

10.5 October
The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton

10.6 September
Distant Shores or Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah (9/25/60)
Midwinter Break or Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty (9/14/42)
Agatha Christie (9/15/1890)

10.7 Scrabble
✓ The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry
Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult
The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield

10.8 Friends
The Best of Friends: Two Women, Two Continents, and One Enduring Friendship by Sara James
We Should Not Be Friends: The Story of a Friendship by Will Schwalbe

10.9 Georgia
The River of Kings by Taylor Brown

10.10 Group Reads
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

20.1 Author! Author!
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne
✓ The Push by Ashley Audrain
The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

20.2 War
✓ Hannah's War by Jan Eliasberg
✓ The Golden Doves by Martha Hall Kelly
The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry

20.3 Dickens
A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
The House of the Whispering Pines by Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935)
Pierre and Jean by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)

20.4 Golden Age
Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank 1959

20.5 Scandinavian Noir
Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell

20.6 Wilder
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller (age 8)
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng (age 12)

20.7 Christie
✓ A Fugue in Time by Rumer Godden
The Sea by John Banville
The Confessions of Catherine de Medici by C.W. Gortner
Queen Margot by Alexandre Dumas

20.8 Morrison
✓ Fences by August Wilson
Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

20.9 Popular Science
Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love by Dava Sobel

20.10 Letters
✓ Go as a River by Shelley Read
✓ Letter From Home by Carolyn G. Hart
✓ The Caretaker by Ron Rash
Letters to the Lost by Iona Grey
The Burning Chambers by Kate Mosse

Thanks, Elizabeth.

It would be wonderful if you could set up a planning thread for the fall tasks. Thanks.

20.1 Favorites Round 2

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

FA 22 20.10 Birthday (Publication date contains 2 consecutive digits) Published in 1992.

+20 task
+ 5 old (before 1998)

Task total: 25
Season total: 435

Planning Ideas:

Lost in Translation:
✓ The Man on the Bench in the Barn by Georges Simenon 15.7
The Elephant's Journey by José Saramago
The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Non-Western: Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea (Mexico)
The Miracles of the Namiya General Store by Keigo Higashino (Japan)

1001: The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Canon: The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

Not-a-Novel:
✓ Ma Rainey's Black Bottom by August Wilson 15.4
Servants of the Map: Stories by Andrea Barrett or
Ship Fever: Stories by Andrea Barrett

Aged (75 or older):
✓ Kingfishers Catch Fire by Rumer Godden (91) 15.8
✓ The Widow's Trial by John Ehle (93) 15.2
✓ Refuge by Dot Jackson (84) 15.10
✓ All Through the Night by Mary Higgins Clark (93) 15.9

Young (50 or younger):
✓ Songbirds by Christy Lefteri (born 1980) 15.5
✓ Salt Houses by Hala Alyan (born 7/27/86) 15.1
✓ It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover (born 12/11/79) 15.3
✓ Evil Eye by Etaf Rum (born 5/8/89) 15.6

10.7 Summertime

Number is in original publication date (2008)

Fine Just the Way it Is by Annie Proulx

Task total: 10
Season total: 410

In honor of Rumer Godden,

read a book by an author who has consecutive same consonants in their name.

Thank you, Joanna, for your wonderful offer.

Theme: the sun and the moon

Read a book with the word sun or moon in the title. Plural, possessives, and compound words included.

Examples:
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

10.8 Summertime

Our Woman in Moscow by Beatriz Williams

Number is in MPE page count - 464 pages

Task total: 10
Season total: 400

Theme of war:

The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War by Howard Bahr (American Civil War)

or if you want a book with more international appeal,
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (World War II)

I was looking through my highly rated books, and found quite a few historical fiction books set during a war among them.

20.10 Favorites

Every Fifteen Minutes by Lisa Scottoline

WI 22-23 20.10 Mystery

Task total: 20
Bonus for 10 tasks from 10 different seasons: 100
Season total: 390

20.9 Favorites

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

FA 10 20.5 Freedom Season (a book related to the American Civil War)

+20 task
+ 5 before 1998 (Published in 1974)

Task total: 25
Season total: 270

I'll be missing the group, but understand that it's getting to be too much. I appreciate all the work that Elizabeth and Kate have done over the years. Some of the tasks expanded my reading into areas that I never thought about before.

20.8 Favorites

Charley Bland by Mary Lee Settle

SU 15 20.4 The South (set in the US South) - book is set in West Virginia

+20 task
+ 5 before 1998 (published in 1989)

Task total: 25
Season total: 245