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

Joanna’s comments from the Reading with Style group.

I really liked the Olive books. I also really enjoyed Lucy Barton. I didn't realize there was another book related to it. I'll have to find a copy of Anything is Possible.

I have Amy and Isabelle on my TBR pile, but haven't thought about reading it in a while. This thread is reminding me of it.

Oh, and now I realize I also have The Burgess Boys on my TBR as well.

20.3 Theodore H. White

The Name of the World by Denis Johnson

Denis Johnson can really write. His turns of phrase and insights are impressive. He has the knack of taking seemingly dull characters--washed up middle-aged history professor in this case--and making them into something more. The people in this book are all flawed and slightly fuzzy and slightly incoherent, but in Johnson's hands this makes them seem raw and vulnerable and real and vivid.

This book doesn't have the same down-and-out gritty characters found in the other Johnson books I've read (Angels and Jesus' Son). Instead, this book is full of academics and graduate students. I know these people better because they populate my own life, though perhaps less fantastically random than the ones in this book. But I missed reading about the harder torn folks from the other Johnson books.

I'll definitely read more by this author.

+20 Task (Johnson)
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.4)

Task total: 35
Grand total: 485

15.6 Blackjack

NW by Zadie Smith

9 of Clubs - Title starts with N
9 of Diamonds - 75% Commonwealth Country - UK

+20 Task
+5 Female

Task total: 25
Grand total: 450

15.5 Blackjack

Loyalty in Death by J.D. Robb

10 of Diamonds (series has 10+ titles)
5 of Hearts (setting 75% in US state - NY)
2 of Diamonds (auth. publishes under 2 names - J.D. Robb and Nora Roberts)

+20 Task
+5 Female

Task total: 25
Grand total: 425

15.4 Blackjack

Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire

King of Spades (word ending in -ing - Tumbling)
6 of Clubs (author name six letters - Seanan)
2 of Clubs (200-299pp - 201pp)

+15 Task
+5 Female author

Task total: 20
Grand total: 400

10.8 Go to Jail

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

This book is just what I expected it to be--hard boiled detective novel; slightly shady P.I., femme fatale, all of it. It's so much the model for these things that it almost felt cliche, then I would remember that in fact it's the model. I loved reading this and Sam Spade is just a fabulous character. I'm surprised he didn't become the lead in a series of stories.

I was interested in the way that Spade didn't seem to have a plan for what he was doing. He was tough and ready to kick butt, but he never really seemed to know from one minute to the next what was going to happen or how anything was going to work out. Generally, most lead detectives are given a little bit more ability to figure everything out a step ahead of the reader and the bad guys.

Very fun.

+10 Task (author has been to jail)
+10 Review
+10 1001 list
+10 Oldies (1930)
+5 Combo (20.4)

Task total: 45
Grand total: 380

As a parent who is trying to keep a small business open while everyone works from home, I will say that I'm finding it nearly impossible to provide much real education to my kids (2nd and 5th grades). I've given them schedules just to try to keep them busy enough that their father and I can plausibly work. I'm also up at 4-5am to get in a few hours before the family wakes.

This is hard.

If they don't really advance in their schooling this year, so be it. They'll have to catch up later. But I'm sure I'd be more worried if they were older and/or if they were struggling students.

10.6 Richard Adams

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Lexile: 890

I loved the pictures in this book. I loved the idea of this book. I'm willing to continue the series just because of how inventive the concept is.

Unfortunately, I didn't love this book. I thought the writing was uneven and the effort to use the photographs ended up interfering with telling the story. I wanted more real character development. Jacob discovers what's happening, and gets better over time, but he felt more like a ten year old than a teenager.

I was planning to read this book out loud with my ten- and eight-year-old kids, but the beginning was too scary for them. Which is too bad, because this book ended up reading more like a middle-grade YA than like a crossover book.

+10 Task
+10 Review
+15 Combo (10.2, 10.3, 20.8 - "He led me to a chair in his office and went to make the tea." p. 96)

Task total: 35
Grand total: 335

20.1 Edmund Morris

Slaves in the Family by Edward Ball

So engaging. The author narrates the audio version of this book and does a fabulous job. This heavily researched, Pulitzer prize winning history of the Ball family and the slaves who were forced into laboring on the rice plantations owned by the Balls. Mr. Ball describes the mixed reactions that he got to his research project--ranging from people who wanted nothing to do with him to those who ended up going back to visit the old plantation sites with him. He seems to have really engaged the project to try to figure out not only the history of the people but the lasting effects that slavery has had through the generations.

Highly recommended.

+20 Task (Pulitzer)
+10 Combo (10.8 - ancestors who went to jail; 20.7 - approved in thread)
+10 Review
+5 Jumbo (505pp)

Task total: 45
Grand total: 300

20.10 It's a Mystery

One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson

I expected this to be more of a mystery or crime novel. This was more of a British general literature book that happened to have some dead bodies in it. Which was fine, better even, but not what I was expecting going in. The author does a good job holding multiple characters and story lines together and having them all fit together in a satisfying way at the end, but it made for a good bit of confusion toward the beginning. I also couldn't remember anything about the first Jackson Brodie book other than that I read it and enjoyed it several years ago. But nothing about Brodie was familiar at all. Perhaps I'd have been less confused at the beginning if I'd had better recall of the first book.

I'll likely read more of the books from this series. I found the author's writing enjoyable and maybe next time I'll remember that these aren't mysteries of the solve-the-crime variety.

+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo (20.8 - "He found a table outside the café and had a cup of tea and a cake, a lemon poppy seed thing." - Ch. 7, 15.7%)

Task total: 35
Grand total: 255

15.3 Blackjack

Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor

8 of Hearts - Set in future/fantasy Africa (says it is former Sudan)
10 of Clubs - pub. 2010

+15 Task
+5 Female

Task total: 20
Grand total: 220

20.9 Women in Translation

An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten

An entertaining collection of short stories about an octogenarian serial killer. These stories managed to feel charming--like a cozy mystery--except that the protagonist is actually a cold-blooded killer willing to engage in quite complicated murders. I enjoyed the way that the murderer used her advanced age as a cover for her crime, even playing up her age and frailty when it suited her. Cleaning up the details and language a bit, I read one of these out loud with my children and they quite enjoyed the twist that the old lady was really a killer.

Recommended as something different and fun to read to take your mind off everything else happening in the world today.

Thanks, Elizabeth, for recommending this.

+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.2)

Task total: 35
Grand total: 200

10.1 Thirst for More

The Woman Who Died a Lot by Jasper Fforde

Just the sort of book I want to be reading right now--nothing too heavy, but smart enough to keep me engaged in this zany world. What I love about this series is that the world created by Fforde is wonderfully wacky (book characters becoming real, time travel, libraries with extensive budgets and corporate naming rights), but has an internal logic all its own. The time travel concept here is extremely clever, though quite hard to explain without revealing too much of the plot.

I will definitely read other books set in this world, or pretty much anything that Fforde writes.

The narrator for the audiobook is excellent. She hits just the right balance of comedy and drama.

+10 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo (20.8 - "You want some tea?" End of Ch. 33 [I listened to the audiobook, so don't have the exact page number])

Task total: 25
Grand total: 165

15.2 Blackjack

Under the Net by Iris Murdoch

Q of Diamonds - set 75% in UK
5 of Spades - orig pub date in 50s (1954)
3 of Spades - three word title

+15 task
+5 female
+5 pre-1995

Task total: 25
Grand total: 140

15.1 Blackjack

The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness

3 of Hearts - 3rd in series
Jack of Clubs - Title has a K ("Book")
5 of Diamonds - 500-599 pages

+15 Task
+5 female

Task total: 20
Grand total: 115

20.2 August Wilson

The Man in My Basement by Walter Mosley

What an extremely strange book this is. The other Walter Mosley book I've read was Devil in a Blue Dress, which is more of a straightforward mystery novel. This book starts from an unusual premise--a white man shows up at the home of a black man and offers the black man a large sum of money to imprison the white man in the basement. The characters interact and talk to each other as the book explores power dynamics, race, philosophy, and the way of the world. The writing is sharp and the book flows along. Even as I disliked the characters most of the time, I couldn't look away from this one. I definitely want to read more Mosley.

+20 Task
+10 Review
+10 Combo (10.4, 20.8 - ""Charles made me some tea." p.88)

Task total: 40
Grand total: 95

10.9 Trilogy

Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

This book dragged a lot more than the Kingsbridge series that I've read by Follett. Maybe I'm just more interested in the medieval setting than I was in the WWI. I listened to this as an audiobook (approximately 30 hours), and found the narrator engaging throughout. Still, if I'd read this book in print, I definitely would have skimmed some of the war descriptions, which I found increasingly tedious.

Really, Follett is at his best when he's writing about class distinctions and relationships between star-crossed lovers. He's adequately good at geopolitical intrigue. But he's pretty lousy at action scenes.

I may read the next book in the trilogy at some point, but I'm not rushing out to find it. I could easily wait five years before starting it.

+10 Task (first in trilogy)
+20 Jumbo (985pp)
+10 Review
+15 Combo (10.6 - 247k ratings, 4.29 stars; 10.8 - character imprisoned for treason; 20.8 - lots of tea, including "Mam was making tea." p. 4)

Task total: 55
Grand total: 55

Many books sent in China or Japan will have tea as well.

Also, I've been reading the trilogy that starts with A Discovery of Witches, and there is tea made in all three.

What about The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World by Melinda Gates?

My bookclub just picked it and am looking for a spot for it. But maybe this is more journalism or memoir?

Do subtitles count for this one?