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

Joanna’s comments from the Reading with Style group.

10.10 Group Reads

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

This book gets the extra star for the excellent narration of the audiobook by Tom Hanks. This first-person narrative lends itself perfectly to audio format and Hanks gives a convincing and compelling performance as the narrator.

The structure of the book is interesting, jumping about in time and memories as a story of a family unfolds with the house as the centerpiece to the lives of the family members. I loved the characters here--they had vitality and complexity. None of them was perfect, all of them were just trying to make it through as best they can. This felt especially right for 2020--the year in which we are all just trying to make it through as best we can.

Ann Patchett is one of those authors who sneaks up on you and overtakes you with solid characters and good writing that somehow feels unexpected. I should read more of her books.

+10 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.6)

Task total: 25
Grand total: 155

20.7 Lifetime

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

This book was a real mix of great and boring. I usually enjoy a good philosophical debate, but I found these discussions sort of dull. But the characters here are great and totally memorable and felt relevant even 150+ years later. I know this author and this book are pretty famous, but I'd never heard of them and only picked it randomly from the 1001 books to read before you die list.

I listened to the version narrated by Anthony Heald, which was an adequate narration, but nothing special. I think there are several audiobook versions. If you can, you might try a different narrator.

+20 Task (1862)
+10 Review
+10 Lost in Translation

Task total: 40
Grand total: 130

15.2 Name of the Game

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Square 4B - letter D - Debut
Square 1B - letter R - 10k+ ratings
Square 14C - letter Y - Auth name ends in Y
Word - DRY

Task total: 15
Grand total: 90

20.3 Post-Modern

Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

A very enjoyable collection of short stories of varying quality. A host of narrators reads the different stories, making for a good listening experience with the stories being clearly distinguished by having different readers. Though these stories are more than fifty years old, I found that they remained relevant and readable today.

The stories have some dystopian flair (Ethical Suicide Parlors, handicaps to make everyone equal, food made from seaweed and sawdust), but there's hope and humor here too. Even the dystopian snippets are laced with humanity and heart. One of the most endearing stories is that of a boy in an orphanage in Germany with blue eyes and brown skin, presumed to be the child of an American soldier. When an American soldier is in town who has brown skin, the child latches on to the adult who must be his father.

I highly recommend this collection.

+20 Task
+10 Review

Task total: 30
Grand total: 75

15.1 Name of the Game

Eva Luna by Isabel Allende

12D - Letter S - auth b. S. America
3C - Letter A - auth b. in August
13E - Letter T - character name in title
16C - Letter E - published 1980s
Word = SATE

+15 Task
+5 pub. before 1996

Task total: 20
Grand total: 45

10.3 Months

Jesus Land: A Memoir by Julia Scheeres

It's clear that this book was important to the author to write, and seems to have had the beneficial effect of bringing to light (and ultimately, the closure of) the abusive "reform" school to which the author was sent. I'm glad the author wrote the book; I'm glad the school is now closed.

All that said, I didn't find this a particularly enjoyable book to read. It seems to have relatively accurately tracked a difficult childhood. But there was little reflection either in the moment or in the end. The conclusion of the book seems to be that everyone in Indiana is a backward hick and thank heavens the author has escaped to Berkeley.

I'm not sorry to have read this, but I'm glad to be done with it and I can't say that I'll be rushing to recommend it.

+10 Task
+10 Review
+5 Prize worthy (ALA Alex Award)

Task total: 25
Grand total: 25

A cool list: https://crimereads.com/seven-novels-t...

#59 is The Inheritance Trilogy. Can I read just one of the books in the trilogy? I read the first book last season and would read the second book here.

10.1 - A Memory Called Empire
10.2 - Peter Pan
10.3 - Jesus Land: A Memoir
The 19th Wife
10.4 - Resurrection Man
10.5 - I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters
Kalooki Nights
The Master
10.6 - The First Bad Man
10.7
10.8
10.9
10.10 - The Dutch House
20.1 - Half of a Yellow Sun
20.2 - Live by Night
20.3 - Welcome to the Monkey House
Moon Palace
20.4 - Aquagenesis: The Origin and Evolution of Life in the Sea
Transcendent Kingdom
Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex
20.5 - Tears of the Giraffe
20.6 - Wide Sargasso Sea
20.7 - Fathers and Sons
20.8 -
20.9 - The Shadow of the Wind
20.10 - Known to Evil

Also looking at I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters, which I think works. The structure is that the fictional character is trying to write her own memoir.

Kalooki Nights - Max Glickman, a Jewish cartoonist whose seminal work is a comic history titled "Five Thousand Years of Bitterness," recalls his childhood in a British suburb in the 1950s.

Does a cartoonist count as an author?

20.2 Journalist

An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago by Alex Kotlowitz

I discovered this author at the True/False film festival, a documentary film festival held each year in Columbia, Missouri. There, I watched his four-part, four-hour series about Chicago in which he explored many different neighborhoods and election campaigns. The author talked after the screening and was such an interesting person, I've sought out some of his work.

This book examines the stories behind murders in Chicago during a three-month period. The author interviews people involved including reporters, prosecutors, detectives, family members, accused and convicted individuals, friends, and witnesses. There is no effort to offer solutions or policies--instead the author just seeks to understand how these murders are handled and something about why they happened.

I enjoyed the book because I liked learning the details of the lives of the individuals. I don't feel like I learned anything meta, but I learned lots of micro details that were fascinating.

+20 Task
+10 Review
+10 Not a novel
+10 Combo (10.7, 10.2 - AASAKLADIC=ASK)

Task total: 50
Grand total: 2105

And that's a wrap for the season! My highest total ever.

20.3 Prolific

Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey

I know I read these when I was in middle school, but I hardly remember them and decided to revisit this classic over the weekend when I wanted a light audiobook to listen to while doing other things. There are some valid complaints about this series, including the borderline-rape of the heroine, but I still enjoyed the mixture of science fiction and fantasy here--outer space, time travel, dragons, alien species invading. I'll probably continue through at least some of the other Pern books now that I've reminded myself of the story.

The narrator for the audiobook (available on Scribd) did a nice job with the book. I was flipping back and forth with the ebook, so that broke up the narration a bit, but I would listen to this narrator again.

+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Oldies (1968)
+15 Combo (10.2 - DAM; 10.3, 20.5)

Task total: 50
Grand total: 2055

10.7 Nonfiction

Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World by Jennifer Palmieri

Like having coffee with a woman mentor, this book blends advice with war stories and tries to make sense of the ways that women still face an uphill struggle to be taken seriously in a male-dominated world, particularly in rooms where power is wielded. The author served as the director of communications for Clinton and Obama and had worked on the John Edwards campaign. She has seen the ways that women's voices can be valued and the ways that Hilary Clinton faced a complicated set of expectations and rules that would never apply to a male candidate. I appreciated the author's optimism that this is a moment in history that ultimately will end with progress and a better world. I appreciated her compassion for people who are feeling left behind or left out of changes that I see as progress. Overall, this was just the book I needed to help me move forward with optimism that we can repair the country and put things on track again after the period of peril that I've felt since 2016.

+10 Task
+10 Review
+10 Not a novel
+5 Combo (10.2 - DMPAOLTTWWWRTWJP = PLOT)

Task total: 35
Grand total: 2005

20.10 Another Birthday

Neuromancer by William Gibson

This is a book I'm glad to have read but also thrilled not to be reading any more. I know this is a classic of the genre and that in 1984 when this was published this basically created a brand new kind of cyberpunk fiction. But I thought the actual book was somewhat confusing and sort of boring to read. It was thickly plotted (maybe even too thickly), but still felt like not much was really happening.

The narrator for the audiobook could have been better. He had a quiet voice and he seemed to stumble a bit over the language where lots of slang terms were made up as part of the world-building. So maybe I'd have liked the book better with a different narrator or if I'd read it in print. Someone should find the guy who narrates The Causal Angel and get him to do this one. That narrator managed a really complicated text with lots of strange words and made it comprehensible.

+20 Task (b. 1948)
+10 Review
+5 Oldies (1984)
+15 Combo (10.8 - Japan, Russia, Turkey; 10.3, 20.9)

Task total: 50

+100 RWS finish
+200 Mega finish

Bonus total: 300

Grand total: 1970

How about Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation? It's classed under 306.7--social science-sexual relations, but it seems to be about animal biology.

20.5 Wine

The Virgin by Tiffany Reisz

I got sucked into this series earlier this year as I began seeking escapist romance novels to distract me. These books are best read in order, so if you are finding your way here without reading the rest of the series, you should go back and read The Siren. If you like it, read the series. If it isn't for you, no reason to be here. These are popular enough that I was able to download them from my library.

This book goes back and tells the backstory of how Kingsley met Juliette in Haiti and in parallel chapters tells the story of Nora/Elle during the year she retreated to a convent to stay with her mother (a nun) and avoid her lover (a priest). I enjoyed reading more about these characters, but this felt more like a loosely held together short story or two rather than a complete novel. I think the author may be running out of steam for this series and these characters.

+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.8 - Haiti, New York, Scotland)

Task total: 35
Grand total: 1620

15.10 Power of 9

Salt Slow by Julia Armfield

+15 Task (author b. 1990)

+100 Power of 9 completion
+50 Single criterion (birth years)
+50 Numerical finish (chronological)

Task total: 15
Bonus total: 200
Grand total: 1585

Ed wrote: "Jan Morris, one of my favorite writers died today... on Transgender Day of Remembrance.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/20/bo..."

Want to recommend one book in particular to someone who hasn't read anything by this writer?