Connie ’s
Comments
(group member since Nov 11, 2013)
Connie ’s
comments
from the Reading with Style group.
Showing 721-740 of 1,905
20.10 Family SagaA Place on Earth by Wendell Berry
+20 task
+ 5 oldie (pub 1966)
Task total: 25
Season total: 25
Congrats, Deedee! Have fun with your gift card!
20.9 NiecesBooks for Living by Will Schwalbe
Will Schwalbe shares his love of books in a thoughtful, personal way in "Books for Living." He chose a group of books that spoke to him when he needed them, or opened his eyes to see the world and life a little differently. The book that he turns to most often is "The Importance of Living" by Lin Yutang which was written in 1937. It showed him the importance of slowing down, enjoying periods of contemplation, and appreciating literature and nature. He highlighted an essay on the enjoyment of laying in bed thinking, napping, and listening to music.
The children's book, "Stuart Little," taught him about searching and going on a quest. A kind librarian put a copy of "Giovanni's Room" in his hands when he was a gay young man in high school. "The Gifts of the Body" was important when he was losing friends to AIDS. Anne Lamont's "Bird by Bird" is a reminder to break tasks into pieces to avoid being overwhelmed. I had never given any thought that the same author, Herman Melville, wrote both "Bartleby, the Scrivener" about quitting, and "Moby Dick" about Captain Ahab never giving up his pursuit of the whale. Sometimes it is better for our mental health, physical well-being, or financial security to quit and take a new path. Although the author mentions around a hundred books, there are twenty-six essays about an individual book.
"Books for Living" is a memoir as well as a book about books. Will Schwalbe uses a warm conversational tone that draws the reader in. I rarely reread books, but I'm keeping this treasure on my shelf to read again.
+20 task
+ 5 combo 10.4 Valentine's
+10 review
Task total: 35
Season total: 590
What a terrible loss! I hope they will be able to replace most of the books.
20.4 ScienceEntangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake
Merlin Sheldrake is an engaging writer who shares his sense of awe when he investigates the mysteries of fungi. This book is not a dull textbook since Sheldrake uses his gift of storytelling to show the natural world to us.
We often think of food when we consider the world of fungi. Mushrooms and truffles are the fruiting bodies of fungi. We use yeast to bake bread and ferment fruit into alcohol. Fungi are also used to make cheese. Fungi can also metabolize more unusual substances--rocks, plastics, oil, and even radioactive waste. Work is being done to convert recycled material into useful items using mycofabrication.
Symbiosis is an important quality of fungi. Most fungi exist as branching networks of tubular cells called mycelium. Underground fungi supply nitrogen, phosphorus, water, and other soil nutrients to the roots of plants. In return, plants supply sugars and lipids, carbon compounds made through photosynthesis, to the fungi. Lichens and seaweeds are other examples of symbiosis where algae and fungi act as partners that both benefit.
Sheldrake interviews mycologists all over the world, and also tells about his own experiments in the field in Panama. He also tries psychedelics in a controlled clinical setting since they have a recent use to treat deep depression. Drugs made from fungi have been used for organ transplant patients to prevent rejection. We can't forget penicillin, a wonder drug that is still widely used.
This is just a small sample of the many ways that fungi are important. Not only are fungi entangled with themselves, but they are entangled with their physical environment and other organisms, including humans. Who knew that fungi could be so fascinating?
+20 task
+ 5 combo 10.4 Valentine's
+10 review
Task total: 35
Season total: 555
10.4 ValentinesThe Bass Rock by Evie Wyld
The North Berwick coast of Scotland, with its view of the Bass Rock, is the setting for the three timelines showing men physically and emotionally abusing women. In addition to the three main stories the book also tells about boys being abused in boarding school, and has snapshots of anonymous women falling victim to misogynistic violence. Men blamed women for their male anger and lack of control. Others labeled women as witches or regarded them as possessions. The book was relentless in its depiction of the violent patriarchy and troubled women through the centuries. The novel lost the force of an important message through overkill. There was also a sense of emotional distance because there were so many characters. It was disappointing since the author can turn a phrase, and possesses talent. 2.5 stars.
+10 task
+10 review
Task total: 20
Season total: 520
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Connie, this doesn't work for Crime, which must be a woman author.A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle"
Thanks for catching it, Elizabeth.
Book Ideas10.1 Enjoyed
Clay's Quilt by Silas House
✓ Knight's Gambit by William Faulkner
10.2 Name (4 letter)
✓ Educated by Tara Westover
10.3 Naughty (Nineties, any century)
✓ Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
The Persian Pickle Club by Sandra Dallas 1995
Where You Once Belonged by Kent Haruf 1990
The Ghost Road by Pat Barker 1995
10.4 Spring (5 in publication year)
✓ The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925
The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham 1925
Mysteries pub in 1950s
10.5 Mother (great list of authors!)
Agatha Christie
Anne Tyler
Celeste Ng
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Daphne du Maurier
Dorothy L. Sayers
✓ Elizabeth Gaskell
Jhumpa Lahiri
Maggie O'Farrell
10.6 Sentence
✓ So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures by Maureen Corrigan
Abide with Me by Elizabeth Strout
I Am the Clay by Chaim Potok
10.7 Codebreakers
The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine who Outwitted America's Enemies by Jason Fagone
✓ In Farleigh Field by Rhys Bowen
10.8 Birds (bird's name in title or author's name)
✓ Dear Mrs. Bird by A.J. Pearce
And the Birds Rained Down by Jocelyne Saucier
Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl by Stacey O'Brien
10.9 Pub Trivia
✓ The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London by Judith Flanders vodka
10.10 Group Read
✓ The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain
20.1 Prize
✓ Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
✓ The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
20.2 Ann/e
Anne Tyler
✓ Run by Ann Patchett
20.3 Opposites
✓ The Dry by Jane Harper 2016
✓ Simon the Fiddler by Paulette Jiles
20.4 Crime (woman author)
✓ Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir by Natasha Trethewey
Beast In View by Margaret Millar 1955
The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison 2013
20.5 Balkans
The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna (Croatia)
✓ Girl at War by Sara Nović (Croatia) (Woman's Prize Nom)
20.6 Achilles
✓ The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Tóibín
The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne
The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff
20.7 Real Person
Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar
✓ Winter by Christopher Nicholson
20.8 Queen of Short Fiction (short stories or novellas, mystery anthology)
Don't Look Now and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier
Ashenden by W. Somerset Maugham
Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman by E.W. Hornung
G K Chesterton
Agatha Christie
Joyce Carol Oates
✓ A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
20.9 Series
The Innocence of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton (#1)
The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker (#2) 1991
The Ghost Road by Pat Barker(#3) 1995
✓ The Transatlantic Book Club by Felicity Hayes-McCoy
✓ Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
20.10 Family
✓ A Place on Earth by Wendell Berry
✓ There There by Tommy Orange
✓ Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
✓ Our Fathers by Andrew O'Hagan
10.4 ValentineBride of the Sea by Eman Quotah
Newlyweds Muneer and Saeedah came to America on student visas. The mismatched young couple from Saudi Arabia were soon expecting their first child, but Muneer already was thinking about divorcing his volatile wife. Muneer returned to Saudi Arabia while their daughter, Hanadi, stayed with his ex-wife in Ohio. Tormented by the fear that Muneer would eventually separate her from their daughter, Saeedah assumed a new name and disappeared with Hanadi. They moved frequently--constantly switching identities, changing schools, never getting close to people, and living a life of lies.
Muneer finally found his daughter when she was seventeen, and introduced her to a loving extended family in Jidda. (The city of Jidda is called the "Bride of the Red Sea.") This is a story of two cultures where Hanadi feels a sense of loss for what she missed and wonders where she belongs. She also loves the greater freedom for women, and educational opportunities in America. The book shows us a broken family over a fifty year period. Details of American and Saudi history, religion, food, and traditions are woven into the story. Author Eman Quotah grew up in both Saudi Arabia and the United States so she is able to sensitively portray Hanadi caught between cultures.
+10 task
+ 5 combo 10.8 Lunar (pub 2021)
+10 review
Task total: 25
Season total: 500
Ten plus an alternate:A--V The Velvet Hours by Alyson Richman
B--Q Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym
C--S Corrag by Susan Fletcher
D--T The Exile of Sara Stevenson by Darci Hannah
E--O Once Upon a Tower by Eloisa James
F--P Flanders by Patricia Anthony
G--Y Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin
J--U Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
K--W When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson
L--R The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
M--N Morning Tide by Neil M. Gunn
10.8 LunarNick by Michael Farris Smith
Michael Farris Smith has written a prequel to "The Great Gatsby" showing the earlier life of Nick Carraway, the character who narrates F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic book. Nick was the quiet observer, the cousin of Daisy Buchanan, and the confidant of Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan. When Nick moved to wealthy West Egg, New York, in 1922, he had recently fought in the Great War and he was bored with working in his Midwestern family's hardware business. Prohibition had started two years earlier. Nick was trying to make a new beginning, but what prompted his fresh start? The prequel imagines the reasons behind Nick's move to New York to start anew.
Nick grew up in a small Minnesota town where he helped his father in his hardware store, and often read to his mother who suffered from long, dark periods of depression. After attending Yale, he volunteered to fight in the Great War and was sent to France. His horrific experiences in the trenches and the tunnels, and the loss of an important relationship devastated him. Suffering from PTSD, he didn't feel ready to face his hometown and headed to New Orleans instead. Always willing to help the downtrodden, he cared for a seriously disabled war veteran. He became involved with the lives of a group of people in the violent city as he searched for redemption.
Michael Farris Smith writes about traumatized people very well. The reader feels like they are in Nick's head as he listens for enemy footsteps as he sits in a tunnel in France, or as he is haunted by memories going around and around his mind. Smith's Nick seems more troubled at the end of "Nick" than Fitzgerald's character in "The Great Gatsby." But that is partly due to his different role in the classic book--acting as the observer of the interactions among the other characters. "Nick" does not try to rewrite "The Great Gatsby," but gives the reader a greater understanding of Nick Carraway, the returning soldiers, the general mood of the country at that time, and the difficulty of moving on in life after trauma.
+10 task (published 2021)
+10 review
Task total: 20
Season total: 475
10.8 LunarA Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders
Writer George Saunders has been teaching creative writing for years, including a course about 19th Century Russian short story writers. Reading this book feels like attending a mini college class with the professor you wish you had as a teacher. Saunders is enthusiastic, warm, and humorous with a conversational tone.
The book consists of the texts of seven short stories, discussions of techniques used by the Russian writers, and an afterthought about how it relates to Saunders' own writing. The seven stories are "In the Cart," "The Darling," and "Gooseberries" by Anton Chekhov; "Master and Man" and "Alyosha the Pot" by Leo Tolstoy; "The Singers" by Ivan Turgenev; and "The Nose" by Nikolai Gogol. Saunders also discusses issues with translation from Russian to English. He shows how ambiguous endings keep us wondering, and sometimes have different meanings depending on the translator. Gogol used lots of plays on words in his writing, but we miss some of his humor because it doesn't come through when the words are translated. My favorite story was Tolstoy's "Master and Man" where characters make repetitive bad choices, and that makes the story work. In several stories Saunders shows how a writer keeps escalating the action to keep the reader's interest. "A Swim in the Pond in the Rain" can be enjoyed by both writers and readers to make their interactions with short stories more meaningful.
+10 task (published 2021)
+ 5 combo 10.4 Valentines
+10 review
Task total: 25
Season total: 455
10.8 LunarA Gracious Plenty by Sheri Reynolds
"A Gracious Plenty" is a magical story that pulls at the emotions. When Finch Nobles was a toddler she pulled a pot of boiling water off the stove, burning her face and shoulders. The resulting scars made her an outcast, and she was taunted by the children in the small town. After her parents died, Finch took over the job of caretaker of the cemetery located on her family's land.
Finch is able to communicate with the dead in the cemetery who still have unfinished business before they eventually "lighten" and ascend to their final reward. They also control the weather, help the growing crops, and keep the four seasons on track. A former beauty queen, a crying baby, and a man with a secret past are among the dead that Finch befriends. Her path crosses that of the local policeman as she tries to make things right between the ghosts in the cemetery and the living people they left behind.
Finch is a likable character with lots of spirit. As the book progresses, we see her opening up to friendship which is difficult after all the rejection she faced as a child. This Southern story is compelling and heartwarming.
+10 task (pub 1997)
+10 review
Task total: 20
Season total: 430
10.4 ValentinesThe Coal Tattoo by Silas House
"Their land was the most important thing they had besides one another. That loving the land was a given, not something one could choose, the same way you love your sister or brother even when you don't want to."
"The Coal Tattoo" is set in the hill country of Kentucky where the mining company helps put food on the table, but sacrifices the land and the men who fall victims to mining accidents. The Sizemore children were raised by their grandmothers after the death of their father in a mining accident and the suicide of their mother. When the grandmothers died, Easter took care of her younger teenage sister, Anneth.
Although they were very close, the temperaments of the two sisters were totally different. Easter was a deeply religious Pentecostal who lived a simple life, and desperately wanted to be a mother. Anneth was a wild beauty who loved dancing, smoking, drinking in bars, and flirting with men. She also had to cope with manic and depressive feelings. "The Coal Tattoo" shows the love between the two sisters which is strong, but often strained. Their shared love of the family land is a strong bond between them.
In addition to the characters, I enjoyed the sense of time and place in this story. Many of the characters were talented singers or musicians, and author Silas House often used music to set a 1960s vibe or show personality traits. A scene with Anneth wildly dancing to "Maybellene" in a tight red dress with all the men's eyes on her was an effective opening to the story. Although this book is part of a trilogy, it can be read as a stand-alone novel.
+10 task
+10 review
Task total: 20
Season total: 410
20.8 TravelThe Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd
"The Living Mountain" is poetic prose in praise of the Cairngorm Mountains of northeastern Scotland. It's nature writing with a philosophical feeling to it. Nan Shepherd started exploring the Cairngorms at an early age, and continued mountain walking until she was aged. Although she was well-traveled, she always returned to her home near the eastern side of the mountain range. Shepherd had climbed its peaks, but she seemed to draw more pleasure from the plateau--observing wildlife, exploring the lochs, and following springs to their natural source. She was a very observant person who often took in the activity of the natural world while she maintained stillness. Shepherd wrote descriptions that use all the senses in appreciating the beautiful, but sometimes unforgiving, mountains.
Nan Shepherd was also the author of three modernist novels, essays, and a collection of poetry about her beloved Cairngorms. She wrote "The Living Mountain" during World War II, but it sat in a drawer for thirty years before being published in 1977. Her image is on Scotland's five-pound note. Robert Macfarlane wrote an excellent introduction to "The Living Mountain" with biographical details and an appreciation of Shepherd's writing. This is a contemplative book that I will tuck away to be enjoyed again.
+20 task
+10 review
Task total: 30
Season total: 390
10.3 WinterAfterlife by Julia Alvarez
When Antonia's husband dies unexpectedly on the day of her retirement as an English professor, her whole world is turned upside down. She faces difficult decisions about who she is going to be going forward. She needs to devote time to self-help and dealing with her grief. But other people need her help too. Her oldest sister is becoming mentally unstable, and the "sisterhood" of four immigrant sisters from the Dominican Republic always look out for each other. Undocumented Mexicans in her Vermont town need her to translate, navigate health care, and help a teenage new mother. Now that Antonia is no longer teaching her students since her retirement, it fills a need in her when she nurtures the young Mexican couple. She wonders what her compassionate doctor husband would do if he were still alive.
"Afterlife" is a beautifully written book about loss, family relationships, and giving to people in need. The book is sprinkled with quotations from Antonia's favorite writers. The story explores the theme of putting the pieces back together when a life has been shattered. A life may be different, but it still can be meaningful.
+10 task
+10 review
Task total: 20
Season total: 360
10.4 ValentineThe Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate
Lisa Wingate again demonstrates that she is a wonderful storyteller in "The Book of Lost Friends." Slave families who had been separated and sold on the auction block wanted to reconnect after the Civil War. They placed advertisements in the Southwestern Christian Advocate, a Methodist newspaper. Preachers read the ads from the pulpit on Sundays hoping to reach the missing family members. The book separates every chapter with a real "Lost Friends" example, and the reader can feel the heartache of the former slaves looking for their loved ones.
In the 1875 timeline of the story, Hannie Gossett, a freed slave and sharecropper, searches for her family members. She's also looking for legal papers from William Gossett showing that she and others have earned ownership of the land they farmed for ten years. She's accompanied by Gossett's two daughters who would be in desperate straits without their inheritance papers. Dressed as young men, they make a dangerous trip from Louisiana to Texas.
Another timeline is set in 1987 Louisiana. Benny Silva has just started her first teaching job in an underfunded rural high school with many minority students. She is unable to interest her challenging students until they start on a project looking into the history of their families. Many of them have a connection in some way to the Gossett plantation. Nathan Gossett provides them with books and historical information. However some of his relatives do not want family secrets to be uncovered.
The two timelines are woven together nicely, and both kept my interest. Benny tells her student an old proverb that says, "We die once when the last breath leaves our bodies. We die a second time when the last person speaks our name." Author Lisa Wingate is helping to keep the stories of the Lost Friends alive so we can be aware of their lives, and how their experiences affected later generations. "The Book of Lost Friends" is compelling historical fiction with interesting characters.
+10 task
+10 review
Task total: 20
Season total: 340
15.4 Name of the GameThe Henna Artist by Alka Joshi
Square 11 D-Letter H-Hot off the press 2020
Square 5 B-Letter I-Born in India
Square 4 B-Letter D-Debut novel
Word: HID
Task total: 15
Season total: 320
10.4 Valentine'sSelected Short Stories by William Faulkner
During the early 20th Century, William Faulkner wrote some wonderful short stories about the South. "A Rose for Emily," a gothic story about a recluse in a changing Southern town, is one of Faulkner's best. "Barn Burning" shows a boy who has to decide whether to follow his conscience or remain loyal to his family while knowing that his father is an arsonist. "Dry September" is an especially well-written story about racial prejudice. Be aware that Faulkner does use the language of that era regarding African-Americans, but he is showing the injustice toward them.
Faulkner also writes stories about wars and their aftermath--the American Civil War, World War I, and World War II. "Two Soldiers" is narrated by a young boy who wanted to follow his brother into the army after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. "Mountain Victory" is set just after the Civil War ended.
Faulkner's short stories are a good introduction to this Southern author. Some feature characters that also have roles in his Yoknapatawpha County novels. Most of the stories in this collection were previously published in the Saturday Evening Post, Scribners, or American Mercury so this is a high quality collection.
+10 task
+10 review
Task total: 20
Season total: 305
20.3 Post-ModernTracks by Louise Erdrich
Set between 1912-1924 in North Dakota, "Tracks" is chronologically the earliest novel in the "Love Medicine" series about some Anishinaabe families. They are caught between the traditions of the indigenous people and the white culture. The book has two narrators--Nanapush, a tribal elder, and Pauline, a mixed-breed orphan whose accounts of events are unreliable. The book opens with tribal numbers being diminished by influenza and consumption, spread by soldiers returning home from World War I.
The Anishinaabe traditionally lived off the plants, fish, and wildlife from their land. but they could not afford the high government taxes on the land. Some land was sold to loggers in order to survive, but clear cutting the trees drove away the wildlife. Hunger, especially during the winter, was a terrible problem.
The tribe was used to trading goods and cooperating as a group before white culture moved in. Later, each family had to use money and try individually to hold on to their plot of land. Eventually, most of the land was sold to the government or lumber companies.
Religion plays a large role in the book. Fleur is a vigorous woman with strong ties to her tribal roots, and spirits in the woods and lake. Fleur is also a skilled hunter, forager, and herbalist. Pauline, in contrast, rejects her native American roots and embraces Christianity. She joins a convent but spends her time in self-flagellation instead of doing good deeds. She exhibits signs of madness as she fights with the Devil, and causes conflict within the tribe.
Author Louise Erdrich weaves together family stories, indigenous traditions, tribal conflicts, and the influence of white culture. There are interesting, quirky characters that will show up again in her "Love Medicine" series of books.
+20 task
+10 review
Task total: 30
Season total: 285
