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

Joanna’s comments from the Reading with Style group.

My exclusive shelves are:

--wishlist: books I'm interested in but don't have a copy of
--TBR: books I have a copy of
--(library): books I've ordered or am planning to get from the library for the season
--read: books I've read
--(kids): books my kids own/have read [very incomplete list, mostly to stop me from buying them again]

I have a tag/non-exclusive shelf for next-tbr where I shelve books I'm particularly excited to read. I consult this list when I'm starting the planning for the season to see what might fit the tasks.

I also make a shelf for each challenge, so when I do the season planning, I put things on rws-2022-spring. At the end of the season, I take off any book that didn't end up getting read that season.

How about Günter Grass - born in Poland, moved to Germany where he lived for 60+ years.

15.6 Central Asia

A Shadow Intelligence by Oliver Harris
Kazakhstan

I don't read many spy novels, but when I do I'm often pleasantly surprised by how gripping the story can be. This felt modern and complex--I have no idea how realistic it actually is, but it felt believable while I was immersed in the story. Here, we have social media, bots, influencers, and complicated deep fakes bringing the classic spy novel to modern tech. Corporations, splinter groups, mercenaries, and different countries governmental and quasi-governmental interests are all moving to try to gain advantage where they can.

I enjoyed reading a book set in Kazakhstan, a country I know little about. The bitter cold weather, the vast open spaces, and the large and often difficult to control borders were all interesting side notes.

I'm interested in reading the follow up book - Ascension.

The narrator for the audiobook did a great job with pacing. The book translated well to audio format and allowed my to hear all the unfamiliar place names without stumbling over them in text.

+15 Task (Kazakhstan)
+20 Project Bonus
+10 Review

Task total: 45
Grand total: 215

I don't see Ascension Island on the list, but would a book set there fit under St. Helena:

Ascension Island is an isolated volcanic island, 7°56′ south of the Equator in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from the coast of Africa and 1,400 miles (2,300 km) from the coast of Brazil. It is governed as part of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha,[2] of which the main island, Saint Helena, is around 800 miles (1,300 km) to the southeast. The territory also includes the sparsely populated Tristan da Cunha archipelago, 2,300 miles (3,700 km) to the south, about halfway to the Antarctic Circle.

I love the Review style because I so enjoy seeing everyone's reviews. I've been adding books to my already long wishlist right and left. Thanks everyone!

15.2 West Africa

The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré

Very well done book and especially impressive for a debut novel. This book traces the story of a young girl in a small village in Nigeria. The book manages to stay in the narrative voice of the protagonist, striking a balance between her lack of knowledge and her courage and curiosity. The author manages to keep the character believable without overly simplifying her story or seeming to be making fun of the character.

She goes from her small village to a forced marriage as third wife of a much older man to being delivered as a house maid to a rich woman in Lagos. The reader gets to tag along to see details of her life in these different settings and to understand her story along the way. Side characters are not deeply developed, but are sufficiently differentiated and described to be believable and useful to the story.

I enjoyed the excellent narration of the audiobook, which was read in the character's voice and worked very well. The story translates well to audio format because it's entirely narrated by the protagonist. I think listening to the dialect worked better for me than reading it would have.

+15 Task (Nigeria)
+10 Review
+10 Non-western

Task total: 35
Grand total: 150

15.9 Southeast Asia

Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski
(Thailand)

This book has been sitting on my shelves for 10 years. It's always looked interesting, but never quite made it to the top of the pile. I direct you to Stephen King's review(https://ew.com/article/2007/04/15/let...) complaining that the marketing of this book made it less popular than it should have been.

The book combines a lot of description of Thailand with a multi-layered mystery and an examination of the role of anthropologists and missionaries in the lives of indigenous people. At the center of the story is an anthropologist who has gone to prison for murdering an American missionary. As her story is told, the reader sees life in the field through her eyes (in the form of letters that she'd written to a friend), and descriptions of her from a variety of sources.

The pacing was good and kept me riveted through the whole story.

The narrator for the audiobook version did a nice job with the narration, making this easy to listen to. I went back and forth between the narration and the text.

+15 Task - Thailand
+10 Review

Task total: 25
Grand total: 115

15.8 South Asia

Sold by Patricia McCormick
Lexile: 820

This book addresses an important topic--sex trafficking and the trade in girls. But the actual book is pretty questionable. The author made an effort to write the book from the first-person perspective of a thirteen-year-old girl from a small Nepalese village who is sold to traders. She's told that she'll be brought to a city to be a domestic servant, but is instead brought to a brothel. The author does a reasonable job trying to stay in the perspective of the girl, but I couldn't help but feel that the author was making her stupider and more passive than seemed reasonable. Overall, the story felt voyeristic and sensational more than it felt moving or personal.

But what really made me dislike this book was that it's a white American man that comes around and saves her. Ugh ugh ugh. Really, it's rich white Americans that are often the clients and the white savior just didn't sit well with me at all.

The epilogue talks about Nepalese women patrolling the borders and doing community education and organizing to try to protect girls from this situation. A story about those efforts would have been more interesting and perhaps could have avoided the pitfalls this book fell into.

For what it's worth, the narrator did an excellent job. I can see why the narration caused this book to get promoted by the Audiosync program. I just wish the book were a little more thoughtful.

+15 Task (Nepal/India)
+10 Review

Task total: 25
Grand total: 90

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Joanna wrote: "David Mitchell

Born in the UK, currently lives in Ireland"

Is that a permanent move?"

I mean, it's hard to tell from someone who has moved around as much as he has, but he and his wife and children have been living there since 2018. Before that they were in Japan (for the second time).

Mitchell lived in Sicily for a year, then moved to Hiroshima, Japan, where he taught English to technical students for eight years, before returning to England, where he could live on his earnings as a writer and support his pregnant wife. ... After another stint in Japan, Mitchell and his wife, Keiko Yoshida, live in Ardfield, County Cork, Ireland, as of 2018. They have two children."

David Mitchell

Born in the UK, currently lives in Ireland

15.4 East Africa

Unbowed by Wangari Maathai

An autobiography of an important and courageous woman, written in a straightforward but not especially artful manner, and ably narrated for the audiobook version. Recommended for the story it's telling about community activism and standing up for justice in the face of danger and bad government.

I first knew about Wangari Maathai from a children's picture book, Wangari's Trees of Peace: A True Story from Africa, which somehow found it's way into my house and was frequently read with my children. There, the focus is on the "greenbelting"/tree planting work. Unbowed highlights how the environmental activism is inseparable from politics.

I'm inspired by her story.

+15 Task (Kenya)
+10 Nonwestern
+10 Review

Task total: 35
Grand total: 65

It's my favorite weekend of the year here in Columbia, Missouri. This weekend we host the True/False Film Fest (https://truefalse.org) - a documentary film festival. Many of the directors and often some of the subjects of the films come to town and answer questions after the screening of their movies.

I'm off to watch far too many movies in too few days. I'll see you Monday!

Agatha Christie experts -- does Death on the Nile fit here (published 1937)?

20.9 Birthdays

Morality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith
(No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency - Book 3)

These are light, pleasant books. The characters are enjoyable and entertaining, so I'm forgiving of the lack of much mystery or detective work in this installment in this series. As always, the reader for the audiobook did a fine job with the narration and I was glad to spend a few hours with these characters.

One of the traits of the protagonist is that she is a "traditionally-built" lady (i.e., larger sized). In this book, there's a moment where the head of the orphanage gives Mma Ramotswe a large piece of cake. She muses that the cake must be hundreds of calories, but she proceeds to eat it thinking that as a traditionally-built lady she need not worry too much about it.

I'll be happy to continue to use this series as a light interlude between more serious or depressing or lengthy reads. I wouldn't want to read these back to back, but I like coming back to the series periodically--it's like stopping in for tea with an old friend.

+20 Task (see above)
+10 Review

Task total: 30
Grand total: 30

I'm so excited about this season's challenge. Even the tasks that initially I couldn't figure out what would work, I've now got some possibilities that I'm looking forward to exploring.

Does Abi Daré count as non-western?

Wikipedia: Abi (Abimbola) Daré is a Nigerian author who now lives in Essex, England.

Goodreads: Abi Daré grew up in Lagos, Nigeria and has lived in the UK for eighteen years.

I don't see that she changed citizenship, but I admit to being a little confused about how residency and nationality interact for this style.

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Sorry, Joanna. Born in 1950 isn't quite old enough for Aged - needs to be at least 75, which would be 1947."

Gah. I had 70 in my head, not 75.

I'll try to do better next season.

10.8 Singles

Sundiver by David Brin

+10 Task
+5 Combo (10.7 - Mystery & Science Fiction)
+10 Aged (author born 1950 - still living)

Task total: 25
Grand total: 365

Yann Martel I think was born to Canadian parents who happened to be in Spain.

How much does the book have to focus on the civil war?

I'm looking through lists and came upon these two on my shelves:

Night Soldiers by Alan Furst
His brother, Khristo Stoianev, is recruited into the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence service, and sent to Spain to serve in its civil war.

Love and Ruin by Paula McLain
In 1937, twenty-eight-year-old Martha travels alone to Madrid to report on the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War and becomes drawn to the stories of ordinary people caught in devastating conflict. She also finds herself unexpectedly—and uncontrollably—falling in love with Hemingway

Both of these have to do with the Civil War in Spain, but I have the sense that both books move around quite a bit.