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

Joanna’s comments from the Reading with Style group.

10.1 Square Peg

The Dispatcher by John Scalzi

Fun little novella by the always-full-of-cool-ideas John Scalzi. I picked this up as an audible exclusive freebie and listened to it as a palette cleanser between longer books. I loved the premise here--suddenly, and inexplicable, people who are murdered start coming back to life. This creates an industry of "dispatchers" whose job is to step in and murder someone just before they might otherwise die from some other cause to give them another chance. There's just enough explanation to hold the story together without getting overly bogged down in details.

The reader for the audible version did a great job. There's a mystery unfolding here within the created science fiction universe that keeps the story chugging along and gives the characters something to do and talk about, which worked quite well for this short book, but would probably not have been rich enough to support a longer story.

I'd love to see Scalzi explore this universe a bit more.

+10 Task
+10 Review

Task total: 20
Grand total: 530

How about Joan of Arc?

Is the "of Arc" part of her name for this purpose?

How about Joan of Arc by Mark Twain?

10.10 Group Reads

The Identicals by Elin Hilderbrand

This is Jodi Picoult for the beach -- multiple character perspectives (even the dog!) and family drama. No headline-grabbing stuff here, though. Just mildly unbelievable but entertaining enough family issues and irrational characters behaving in vaguely random ways, but everything wrapping up neatly at the end with all princesses matched with princes.

When I was a teenager, I read a Harlequin romance whose premise was that a twin sister was engaged to a blind man and she decides to switch places with her twin. I've always found the idea completely farcical, but also weirdly fascinating. Here again, this twister plot line had the same sort of completely unbelievable but still bizarrely gripping feel. Could a twin possibly seduce the other twin's beau? Would he really not realize that it was weird immediately? But how operatically wonderful.

I mostly enjoyed this for the descriptions of Nantucket (where I've never been) and Martha's Vineyard (where I have been several times). Hilderbrand has a sense of place--you feel the small town gossip-mongering, the salt air, the sandy beaches, and the summer ice cream season. She name-drops some of the famous people who visit these islands as well as some of the well-known restaurants and locations. This is enough to get me excited for summer vacation.

Not really my cup of tea, but fine enough for what it is -- cotton candy for the eyes.

+10 Task
+10 Review
+10 Combo (10.8, 10.9)

Task total: 30
Grand total: 510

10.4 Animal

Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov

This book is satire, of the wicked Russian variety. But it's also just entertaining. For reasons never really explained, a scientist decides to transplant a piece of the brain and the penis/testicles of a recently deceased human into an unfortunate dog. Somehow, this causes the dog to become mostly human, but with entertaining remaining dog traits. I read nearly the whole book on an airplane and it was completely absorbing--I hardly noticed the plane's takeoff or landing.

It's hard to believe that this was written in 1925--it's immediately readable and doesn't feel dated. It could be a cautionary tale for today just as much as it was a satire of the New Russian Man in its time.

Highly recommended.

+10 Task
+10 Review
+10 Lost in Translation
+10 Oldies (1925)
+10 Combo (10.8, 20.10)

Task total: 50
Grand total: 480

20.2 Rebecca

The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark

Quite an impressive writer, that Muriel Spark. This novel of Slender Means, read by the lovely narrator in just under three hours, allows the reader to believe that one is reading a slightly frivolous book about young women immediately after the end of WWII. Jostling along with flirtatious interests, ration books, and dress-sharing, I wasn't prepared for the novel's darker turn. Muriel Spark is an impressive observer of daily interactions and manages to capture the minor jealousies and moments of competitive behavior that seem to be so much a part of young women's interactions with one another.

These women felt very real despite having very sparse prose in which to develop.

This is only my second Spark book, the other being The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I've quite enjoyed both books and should really read more of her work.

+20 Task
+10 Review
+10 Combo (10.8, 10.3)
+5 Oldies (1963)

Task total: 45
Grand total: 425

20.8 Poetry

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

How did this become an international bestseller?

The topics are emotional, the feelings are strong, but I just kept turning pages waiting for the moment when I'd see why anyone was impressed. Perhaps I need to listen to the author read this--from what I've seen, she's a spoken word poet first. Maybe in her own voice, the emotion that's so clearly there comes across in a way that isn't happening on the printed page.

The refusal to use capital letters felt twee rather than profound. The illustrations were mostly filler rather than feeling like they enhanced the words.

I wanted to like this so much more than I did.

+20 Task (author b. 1992)
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.8)

Task total: 35
Grand total: 380

20.7 Anna Karenina

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
Lexile: 1000

I'm truly amazed that this book made a variety of bestseller lists and best of lists.

I found the book superficial and implausible and borderline offensive (though I'm having trouble pinning down why -- maybe just that it felt like the superficial and naive look at the Holocaust was almost meant to be endearing or cute).

The book is told from the perspective of Bruno, the son of a Nazi commander who becomes the commander of Auschwitz (non-charmingly mispronounced by the protagonist throughout the story). Bruno is supposed to be nine, but he comes across as younger than that. The reader is meant to accept that he has no idea what a Jew is, that he has no idea what the camp is (not only does he not know it's a death camp, which might be believable, but he doesn't even know that it's a prison camp, which is basically not believable).

The author refused to have even the adults directly say anything to Bruno about the camp or the Jewish people housed there, other than one brief exchange where someone off-handedly says they aren't really people. But I think this was a ducking of what should have been faced head on--surely Bruno's family would have been indoctrinating the children with talk about the evils of Jewish people and the Nazi plan for purification.

The story drives forward to what felt like an almost inevitable ending to me, though perhaps it was meant to be a surprise.

The narrator did the best he could with the story, though the nearly random insertion of music at certain chapter breaks interrupted the story rather than helping it.

At least the book is short.

+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.3)

Task total: 35
Grand total: 345

20.1 Moll Flanders

Luciana by Erin Teagan
low lexile

Very nice middle-grade book. Unlike some books aimed at girls, I thought this was a real book and I enjoyed reading it aloud with my children ages 7 and 10.

Task total: 20
Grand total: 310

20.9 True Crime

People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo--and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up by Richard Lloyd Parry

What made this book appeal to me and may put off readers of true crime is that the book spends a great deal of its time talking about things other than the detail of the crime. In particular, there's a pretty deep look at the cultural context of a British girl hostessing in Tokyo, the fact that the killer is an ethnic minority (Korean) in Japanese society, and the way the Japanese legal system works.

Perhaps most interesting was the author's analysis of the victim's father. The author was clearly fascinated by the father and almost seemed like he'd prefer to write a biography of him or a fictionalized account from his perspective. The father really pushed the investigation (even making Tony Blair comment on it), then, interestingly, accepted a substantial monetary payment from the killer. The author examines the exchange involved and spends a substantial amount of time thinking through the different reactions to the acceptance of this money.

As a trial attorney who helps people get paid to compensate them for emotional damages that can't really be measured in money but it's the best we've got, I had a lot of sympathy for the author and for the dad. Of course nothing brings the daughter back to life, but why shouldn't dad get to use the money instead of the killer keeping it? But the dad is demonized by the victim's mother and the court of public opinion as greedy and despoiling the victim. For me, this was by far the biggest takeaway from this book.

The narrator did a nice job with the audiobook. The pacing of this book is good--the investigation drives forward pretty quickly and with a feeling of suspense even though the outlines of the crime are known from the beginning. The narration helps the reader feel this with pauses in the right places.

+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo (20.10 - Japan)

Task total: 35
Grand total: 290

20.1 Moll Flanders

Circe by Madeline Miller

This book deserves the hype. The book takes Circe from the Odyssey and creates a modern mythology that's accessible, fun, and just really works both as a retelling and as a story for people with no real knowledge of Greek mythology. I can't wait for my kids to be old enough to read this with them. They've been hearing snippets of Greek myths as bedtime stories since they were born and I think they'll get a real kick out of this one.

Retellings are tricky since there's so much backstory to deal with, but Miller adeptly weaves different pieces into her tale in ways that mostly fit right in and worked (with occasional quibbles that something was just distracting name-dropping rather than a fitting part of the Circe story). I loved the way the family tree was fleshed out between Circe, her siblings, and her father.

The narrator for the audiobook did an excellent job pacing the story and reads in a lovely lilting accent that fit the book perfectly. I found myself actually looking for more chores to do to keep listening a little longer.

+20 Task
+10 Review
+10 Combo (10.7, 10.9)

Task total: 40
Grand total: 255

10.8 Megafinish

Flashback by Shannon Messenger
Lexile: 830

An enjoyable continuation to this series. Since this is book 7, you have no business jumping into this series and this universe at this point. If you want to read these books, go back to book 1 and start there. If you are already reading along, this is more of the same. If you liked books 1-6, you'll like this one. If you didn't like those, you should have quit this series a long time ago.

My seven year old and ten year old are loving this series. We've read all of these out loud and they are now anxiously awaiting Book 8 (not released until November 2019). I recommend this for young adult fantasy readers. My ten year old could read these by himself if he wanted to, but since we've read all of them together, he hasn't been. As the grown-up reader, I mind these books much less than some other young adult novels. That said, I don't think these have enough adult appeal to stand alone for readers not reading along with younger readers.

This series would translate well to audiobook format.

+10 Task
+10 Review

Task total: 20
Grand total: 200

20.5 Myra Breckinridge

Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano

There's a lot here in the book gives one a lot to think about. Between the time this book was originally published, then republished as a second edition, and now, public opinion, feminism, and conversations about gender have shifted, shifted again, and even come full circle. For example, the author speaks at some length about feminists who exclude trans-women as "not real women" in thinking about feminists spaces and women-only spaces. Ten years ago I might've said that such people were mere fringe of the feminist movement who had been largely ignored and stamped out by modern feminism. Now, I'm not so sure. It seems that these people have gotten a stronger foothold within the ranks of feminism than I would've expected.

Serano does a great job explaining her personal experiences before, during, and after transition. She describes in some detail the process that she went through in determining that she wanted to transition, and the effects that the transition had both physically and emotionally for her. It's in these personal essays where this book really shines. Reading her descriptions gives me a much broader understanding of the experiences of a person with gendered feelings that are very different from my own. The book is worth reading for this alone.

The author reads the audiobook herself, and does an excellent job. Hearing the emotion behind the personal words in her voice made the book that much more powerful.

+20 Task
+10 Review

Task total: 30
Grand total: 180

20.10 Asia

Fox Girl by Nora Okja Keller

Heartbreaking, gut wrenching, and impossible to look away. This novel gripped me by the throat and wouldn't let go even during the moments that the characters were all highly unlikable, the occasional moments when the timeline seemed to get confused, and the ultimately unsatisfying ending.

The book tells, in harsh and unrelenting detail, the story of Korean girls and women living as prostitutes in America Town, a GI camp toward the end of the Korean War. The book doesn't shy from the segregation and racism existed within the G.I. camp nor does it let the reader escape the uncomfortable and often harsh realities of life for the children chronicled here.

The beginning of the book explains that the chapters are written as letters that perhaps one character will one day deliver to the other (her half sister). This allows the chapters to be related but somewhat disjointed, a mechanism that the author couldn't always control completely.

I liked this book enough to want to seek out the author's other work.

+20 Task (Korea, with only a few pages in Hawaii)
+10 Review
+20 Combo (10.4 - fox; 10.8; 10.9; 20.3)

Task total: 50
Grand total: 150

20.3 Ella Minnow Pea

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth E. Wein

I first heard of this book when it was one of the choices of the wonderful Audiobook Sync summer program, where they pair different young adult audiobooks together to provide interesting comparisons. I can't even remember what book this one was paired with, presumably something else about WWII.

While this book is marketed as young adult, it didn't feel like a young adult novel. This is a war novel, complete with Nazi interrogations, harrowing plotlines, and strong emotional pulls. I woudn't be quick to recommend this to young readers unless they're fairly well-versed in WWII history and are prepared for the themes here.

The plot is so well done that I don't want to spoil it here. I definitely recommend this one to folks looking for an interesting look at women spies in WWII. It's an interesting counterpart to The Alice Network, which traces female spies in both WWI and WWII.

+20 Task (journals kept by the two main characters)
+5 Combo (10.7)
+10 Review

Task total: 35
Grand total: 100

10.8 MEGAFINISH

Submission by Michel Houellebecq

Scandalous and offensive, yet also literary and satirical political commentary. I couldn't quite get past the ennui mixed with the graphic sex scenes to focus on the political commentary or the literary dialogue with Joris-Karl Huysmans (French author and strange punk favorite). Houellebecq writes depressing books that focus on all the angst of meaningless lives.

Here, the meaningless life is being lived by a washed up literature professor who has hit middle age and is starting to think there's no pleasure left in life. Then, France elects a conservative Muslim government and only professors who convert to Islam can continue to teach at the universities. The book agonizes about whether being matched with a couple of child-wives won't improve his overall outlook.

On the one hand, this is impressive writing that manages to offend everyone but has an actual political point to make. On the other hand, maybe it's really just an excuse to play out all of the author's most offensive fantasies in the name of satire. I'm lost somewhere in the middle of the thought experiment.

+10 Task
+10 LiT (from French)
+10 Review

Task total: 30
Grand total: 65

20.5 Myra Breckinridge

Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie

This excellent conclusion to the Imperial Radch/Ancillary trilogy is a sensational book. The author deftly manages the world that she's built and easily blends daily life and small domestic interactions with the space opera and gender-bending society so carefully crafted over the previous two novels. Breq continues to be a fantastic protagonist--a ship turned individual, sort of--and really comes into her own in this novel. I'm tremendously impressed that this author managed to string all of these different elements together into a book that still had character development, suspense, and a fun plot.

The narrator for this audiobook is the same as the one for book two, but not the same as book one, which means the pronunciations all changed from book one, but I got used to it during book two, so didn't find it troubling here.

+20 Task (book explores complicated gender issues; protagonist is an AI/ship, but occupies a body referred to by most characters as she, has a relationship with a female officer on the ship)
+10 review
+5 combo (10.8)

Task total: 35
Grand total: 35

Will this work: Code Name Verity by Elizabeth E. Wein

I read Varina by Charles Frazier with my book club recently and enjoyed it.

Varina is the wife of Jefferson Davis.

What about Loving Frank by Nancy Horan? That seems like it will work here and has been on my TBR forever.

20.4 Wilkie Collins

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

+20 Task
+15 Combo (10.10, 20.1, 20.6)
+5 Prizeworthy (Audie Award)
+10 Canon
+5 Jumbo

Task total: 55
Grand total: 265