Joanna’s Comments (group member since Nov 17, 2010)

Joanna’s comments from the Reading with Style group.

How about Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett?

It seems like it's parodying war/military:

From the New York Times -https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/bo...
As ever, Pratchett revels in pricking pomp and assurance, but it isn't going too far to say that of late his real subject, like Wilfred Owen's, is the pity of war.

Well, I only read 13 books this season, but for a season with two week-long jury trials, I'd say that's quite an accomplishment.

I'm going to focus on my carryover book for the next two days.

15.3 O65 - Title has five words

House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III

I am perhaps one of the last readers to have read this book. It's been sitting patiently on my shelves since at least 2007.

I'm glad to have finally read it and I found it broadly entertaining, but not likely to be particularly memorable. The story sets up a culture clash story between a displaced Iranian family who fled with the fall of the Shah and a woman whose life has somewhat fallen apart, but at least someone left her a house.

The characters are well-drawn and compelling, particularly Colonel Behrani. But in the end, I found the plot so ridiculous that I couldn't quite connect with the story as a whole.

+15 Task
+5 Review

Task total: 20
Grand total: 320

I'm considering this book: Gigi and The Cat.

It looks to me like Gigi was published in 1944 and The Cat (La Chatte) in 1933.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colette

Does this qualify for 10 oldies points?

I'm considering North to Paradise by Ousman Umar which shows Cultural>Spain at the bottom of the MPG list right now. Can I please lock this in?

Because I should be working, I'm doing this...

2023 - St. Louis Literary Award - InterWorld
2022 - Oregon Book Award - What Strange Paradise
2021 - Hugo - The Empress of Salt and Fortune
2020 - Nebula - Ring Shout
2019 - National Book Award - Trust Exercise
2018 - Hurston/Wright Legacy - Semiautomatic
2017 - Ferro Grumley - They May Not Mean To, But They Do
2016 - Edmond White - For Today I Am a Boy
2015 - California Book Award - The Sympathizer
2014 - Bram Stoker - Soft Apocalypses OR 2017 - Bram Stoker - Strange Weather

For the Lifetime Achievement awards, those count as the year the author won them for date purposes and we can read any book by that author?

Also, can we use 2023 as a year since the St. Louis Literary Award has already announced the 2023 recipient?

15.2 I22- Title has 2 words

Sacré Bleu by Christopher Moore

So one day Moore is sitting in a museum looking at old French paintings, and thinking about how Van Gogh killed himself, and he thinks to himself, what if there was an actual supernatural being, a muse say, who was influencing all of these guys. She'd have to be a really beautiful woman. But that's not interesting...so what if she also has a vulgar little man a la Rumpelstiltskin who is part of the story...oh yes, and remember how it seems likely that ancient peoples had no word for blue? What if it all surrounds the color.

Somehow, Moore is able to pull this off and turn it into quite an entertaining book. This was just the book that I needed right now as I'm working long hours and need something diverting, amusing, and not too taxing to listen to in short moments.

The narrator for the audiobook is excellent.

+15 Task
+5 Review

Task total: 20

Bingo #2 - B3, I22, N34, G48, O63

+50

Post total: 70
Grand total: 300

15.1 - O63 - Orphan

Perfect Scoundrels by Ally Carter

The third and (currently) final installment in the Heist Society trilogy, this book requires knowledge of these characters and their lives from the previous books. I don't think this would be enjoyable as a stand-alone novel. Here, we get a little more character development than we'd seen in the prior two books--some back story on some of the characters and slightly more believable motivations. But we still have a good sized dose of implausibility here--the whole series is premised on teenage art thieves flying around the world stealing priceless art.

I loved the ending here. It was truly clever and wrapped up the book and the series nicely and in a satisfying way.

My ten-year-old adored this series. She'd read more of it if they were available. As the adult reader, I found it rather outlandish, but still fun and with enough action to keep it interesting and entertaining as long as one can set aside disbelief about all the convenient coincidences and implausible ability of teenagers to pull off complicated heists.

+15 Task
+5 Review

Task total: 20
Grand total: 230

10.10 O70 - Published in the 70s

Fear of Flying by Erica Jong

This is a book that I've felt like I should read for a long time. It's got this classic mystique about it, and is the origin of zipless fucks, which is such a great term. Just the fact that anyone was willing to put out female sexuality in it's raw form--neurotic, irrational, not always nice--is important. The actual character can be insufferable. And maybe hasn't aged as well as Jong would have wanted--I imagine she cringes in rereading some of these passages. And maybe the whole book isn't exactly fun to read.

So, I'm glad to have read this, but I'm not sure I'd exactly recommend it.

+10 Task (pub. 1973)
+5 Oldies
+5 Review

Task total: 20

First Bingo - B7, I17, N36, G50, O70

+50 Bingo

Post total: 65
Grand total: 210

10.9 G48 - Title has Go

Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire

I just love this series. Magical doors to alternate worlds is not a new concept for fantasy stories, but this series takes the concept in a novel and wonderful direction by imagining myriad doors that appear to special children and lead them to all manner of alternate worlds. Some of these worlds are lovely and wonderful, others terrifying or cruel, but all have special appeal to the child for whom the door appeared.

These books work wonderfully as audiobooks. I've listened to all of the books in audio format and enjoyed all of them. They have different narrators, chosen to be a good fit for the particular story.

This series is best read in order, so if you haven't yet, go immediately and check out Every Heart a Doorway.

+10 Task
+5 Review

Task total: 15
Grand total: 140

10.8 G50 - Author born in the 50s

An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed by Helene Tursten

Not quite as entertaining as the first installment of these stories, but I was still pleased to hear more of Maude's stories. I still love the idea of an octogenarian serial killer who solves "problems" with a little dash of murder. You know, just the ones that "need killing."

I found the description of Maude's trip to Africa too long and meandering, and the ending too cheesy.

Still, an enjoyable and short read.

+10 Task (b. 1954)
+5 Review

Task total: 15
Grand total: 125

10.7 B4 - Historical Fiction

The Alienist by Caleb Carr

This book has been on my TBR since at least 2007. I'm not sure why I had the idea that this was a great novel that I really should read. In fact, it was a perfectly adequate historical mystery set in 1897 New York City.

The book makes a sort of funny counterpoint to the "In Death" series by JD Robb. There, in a futuristic NYC, a female police detective doggedly pursues serial killers (and enjoys a billionaire lifestyle courtesy of her rich and dashing husband). The future computers are constantly spitting out statistics on the profiles and likelihoods for different suspects.

Here, in this pre-computer history, these guys are imagining that there must be a way to figure out a killer based on facts from his childhood and personal history and they are slowly building their profile through lots of searching out details.

Unfortunately, I never found any of the characters particularly interesting or complete. I could hardly care less about the doctor, didn't care about a bad thing that happened to him during the story, and could hardly tell the side characters apart. So, the book flourished in historical detail, and had some interesting stuff to say about early psychology, but ultimately wasn't that great to actually read.

+10 Task
+5 Review
+5 Pre-1997 (pub. 1994)

Task total: 20
Grand total: 110

10.6 N31 - New to me author

Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy by Talia Lavin

I bought this book in a lovely bookshop in London. I was standing in front of the politics section feeling overwhelmed and noticing that nearly everything was written by a man. I picked this off the shelf initially just because it was one of the few books written by a woman.

I expected to learn more from this than I actually did. Maybe I just already know more about the ultra-right-wing crazies than many people, but somehow this journey didn't feel all that revelatory. I enjoyed the light and conversational tone, but I wanted less memoir of the author's own journey and more detailed information about how these groups work, how people fall down the rabbit hole, and how they find their way out. So, maybe what I'm saying is that I wanted this to be a different book than it was.

If I'm going to read a light and breezy memoir, I want a less depressing topic. If I'm going to spend several hours thinking about hate-filled-conspiracy-theorists, I want to actually learn more about how to work against them, how to rescue people from their propaganda, or more details of how they are operating. That's not mostly available in this book, though the description of her catfishing a Ukrainian terrorist was highly amusing and perhaps a bit instructive.

+10 Task
+5 Review

Task total: 15
Grand total: 90

10.5 B2 - Booker Prize

Everything Under by Daisy Johnson

I picked this book up on a whim at a lovely bookshop in London. I'd never heard of the book or the author, despite it having been shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2018. The handwritten note next to the book said something like, "I can't describe what the book is about and I couldn't put it down. Everyone should read this." An apt description, I'd say, though I'm not sure this book would appeal to everyone.

It's written in a highly experimental format, which I think certain readers will find confusing. You have to go with the flow of the story, shifting narrators, and flipping about in time. It's a story about a river, and the format feels sort of like river rafting--there are slow bits, then suddenly a patch of rapids where you're left spinning dizzily, then a smooth fast moving part, then another lilting bit of slowness. But the writing is dazzling. I was carries along by the beauty of the sentences and the emotional pull of the story.

I'm so glad to have read this book and will definitely now be looking into more books by this author.

+10 Task (Booker shortlist 2018)
+5 Review

Task total: 15
Grand total: 75

10.4 N34 - Nebula

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar

Everyone I know loved this book, so I'm distinctly in the minority here, but I found it frustrating and somewhat dull through most of the book. Perhaps it would have been better in print rather than audio format, though usually epistolary novels work well in narration.

The ending neatly brought the story around, so an extra star for that. And I wanted more of the universe and how the time war worked. But I cared little about Red or Blue or their supposed romance. Maybe I'm just feeling jaded right now.

+10 Task
+5 Review

Task total: 15
Grand total: 60

@Anika

If you liked the idea of the characters in the books having their real lives when the books aren't being read, allow me to recommend the The Eyre Affair and the rest of the books in the series. Jasper Fforde is really clever and I've found this series delightful. I can't help but feel that Jodi Picoult (and her daughter) must have read or heard about Fforde's series.

10.3 N36 - Not a Novel

The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler

+10 Task (nonfiction)
+5 Review

Task total: 15
Grand total: 45

10.2 I17 - Title Word Ends in -ing

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green

This book was given to me by a family member who pulled it from her shelves. I'm not sure if she had read it or not when she passed it to me.

This book is everything that Followers wanted to be but couldn't quite manage. It's a fun story with an engaging if frustrating narrator that takes on a scathing critique of social media and the way that it impacts its stars. Here, we have a drifting twenty-something who finds a cool sculpture on the sidewalk in New York and makes a YouTube video about it. The video goes viral when it turns out that the sculpture isn't just in New York but has suddenly appeared in a few dozen cities all over the world. Turns out, weird aliens. Ones who don't talk or directly interact really and whose intentions are entirely obscure.

So, a slightly over the top plot. But well written and well timed enough to keep me engaged and strongly interested in what happens next. So much so that I may have to search out the sequel to this even though I hadn't really planned to.

The narrator for the audiobook was lively and sold the first person narration. I recommend this book in that format because it really fits with the online/social media personality vibe.

+10 Task
+5 Review

Task total: 15
Grand total: 30

10.1 B7 - Best books - rating 4.0+

Uncommon Criminals by Ally Carter

I listened to this audiobook with my ten-year-old daughter. She is really enjoying this series and was ready to move on to Book 3 immediately upon finishing this installment. I think I liked Heist Society a little bit more because the idea of teenage art thieves was new and funny. Here, the main character is trying to be the art thief avenger by stealing art that was taken by the Nazis and returning it to the original owners/owners' family. I didn't buy this "redemption" and liked better the idea that they were just pure thieves.

Also, there's a small romance thread here that never felt necessary or developed. I'd rather these just be a group of friends than have the budding romance lurking in the story.

That said, the book was entertaining and the narrator did a fine job keeping the story moving along.

+10 Task (Rating 4.13)
+5 Review

Task total: 15
Grand total: 15