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

Joanna’s comments from the Reading with Style group.

20.10 Over and Under

Stolen Waters by Shaun Mackelprang

+20 Task (4.8/5)
+20 Combo - 10.2, 10.4, 10.8, 10.9 (MS)

Task total: 40
Grand total: 210

20.9 Long Nights

A Column of Fire by Ken Follett

+20 Task (916 pgs)
+10 Combo - 10.2, 20.5 (1000+ shelvings)
+20 Jumbo

Task total: 50
Grand total: 170

20.7 Darwin

The Last Grain Race by Eric Newby

+20 Task
+25 Combo - 10.3 (1952), 10.8, 10.9 (NE), 20.1 (Dec. 6), 20.10 (4.23/567)
+10 Aged

Task total: 55
Grand total: 120

20.6 Wharton

Ceremony in Death by J.D. Robb

+20 Task
+5 Combo (10.2)

Task total: 25
Grand total: 65

Sorry to be posting a bunch in row...I've been reading, but not finding time to post...

20.2 Boyle

Things that Fall from the Sky by Kevin Brockmeier

+20 Task
+15 Combo - 20.1 (Dec. 6), 20.3 (short stories), 20.10 (3.9/574)
+5 Prizeworthy (O. Henry award)

Task total: 40
Grand total: 40

Eric Newby Dec. 6

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Newby

Kevin Brockmeier also Dec. 6

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_B...

Does a young adult novel still count as a novel for adding up to five novels? Or does it have to be five adult novels?

Anyone see a spot for Varina by Charles Frazier or have I found my square peg?

If the listed book is part of a series, can we read a later book in the same series or only the one actually listed? the list specifically tells voters only to put the first in the series on the list.

20.10 Fall Equinox

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

The episodes described here are broad-strokes bits of relationship trivia (and non-trivia) that add up to something like a cubist painting of a scene. You have the general idea of what happened, who these people are, what they are feeling, but not completely. I wanted to like this one more than I did. The idea of doing this was excellent. In fact, I picked this right after reading My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout. I thought this would be a similar exploration of a husband/wife relationship where Lucy Barton is a mother/daughter relationship.

But this book just didn't work as well for me. The episodes described here weren't fully fleshed out, so I didn't feel that I was getting poignant glimpses into the relationship. Instead, I always felt distant from the scene.

+20 Task
+10 Review
+10 Combo (20.7 - 179 pp., 10.4 - 21st Cent. Lit. shelf)

Task total: 40
Grand total: 635

20.7 A Month in Country

Silently and Very Fast by Catherynne M. Valente

I'm so glad this short book/novella was recommended as a group read in one of my GR groups. I never would have found this book or this author otherwise.

I'm absolutely amazed by this book. Writing about artificial intelligence is hard. How do you make a computer system intelligible enough to be readable, but foreign enough to be fascinating and worth reading? Valente manages to walk the line elegantly and trembling with emotion. She asks the hard questions--what does it mean to be alive? What's the point anyway? What is an individual? What would it be like to have a computer really coexist with a person?

But these questions aren't used to moralize about AI. There's no blunt object here--the entire story circles around and around the questions in one of the most amazing and creative thought experiments--an "Interiority" that is jointly created and controlled by the computer and the human; that can be anything imaginable, infinitely changeable, yet with a lasting history.

Thanks for making this a Group Read!

+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.10)
+5 Prizeworthy (Locus)

Task total: 40
Grand total: 595

20.6 The Stone Carvers

My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

This book felt authentic. Powerful. Elizabeth Strout manages to capture a moment in time and tell a comprehensive story of a complicated relationship through this interaction. Mother/daughter relationships, even great ones, are slippery and elusive to capture. Complicated and difficult relationships even more so. But Strout nails it here. We get a real sense of both the title character and her family of origin through the snippets that Lucy Barton chooses to write. There's a meta-story here: the character discusses writing the stories that become the book, her authorial thoughts about them. But it doesn't feel weird or post-modern in Strout's hands; it just feels like another way we get to know the characters.

The narrator for the audiobook did a lovely job with this text, which was likely a bit tricky to translate to audio format because the story jumps around quite a bit and some passages are unfinished.

I can't quite put my finger on why this wasn't a five-star read for me. I have nothing bad to say here. I think this would be an interesting book club choice -- short enough that most people would read it; complicated enough for discussion; relatable enough to elicit personal stories of readers' own mother/daughter relations.

Highly recommended.

+20 Task (listed 2016)
+10 Review
+20 Combo (10.5, 20.4, 20.7, 20.10)
+5 Prizeworthy (NABIA book of the year)

Task total: 55
Grand total: 555

10.1 Favorite Lists

Vox by Christina Dalcher

This book proves it isn't so easy to be Margaret Atwood. The idea here is interesting: what if we literally silence women by using a wristband that counts the number of words a woman speaks and gives her electric shocks if she exceeds the limit? And what if we make that limit just 100 words a day?

Unfortunately, an interesting idea isn't enough to carry a book. The author couldn't decide whether she wanted to get into the history of how this came to be or not. She couldn't decide how much she wanted to flesh out the technology. She couldn't even really decide what she wanted to say about this dystopia other than that it's important who you vote for and that you speak up. Because I'm so depressed about the state of the country right now, I was still gripped by this message even in this mess of a book.

But really, don't read this one. Just remember to vote.

+10 Task (#39 on Best Books 2018: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1..., posted in 461 by Anika)
+10 Review

+5 from Post 535 (adding +5 combo to Post 517 because one of the main characters in The Alice Network is single)

Task total: 20 + 5
Grand total: 500

10.1 Favorite Lists

Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay

I'm not sure how I came to own this book. I don't remember knowing anything about it, like, ever. But there it was on my fantasy shelf when I needed something to bring on a plane in September.

I liked the sense of place here -- the French countryside was described in glorious detail. The father of the hero is a famous photographer and there are several points where entire photograph plans are described (in a way that's engaging rather than dull, even to someone who knows little about photography).

I liked the history too. When traveling in Europe, I've always felt a sort of awe at the centuries of Western-Civ history that soaks through the land. This book takes that awe and turns it into fantastical reality as the hero and those around him become enmeshed in a centuries-long love triangle/epic battle that recurs on certain Celtic holidays.

Unfortunately, the characters never seemed to fit their ages. The hero and his geeky sidekick female friend are allegedly fifteen, but usually seem thirty. The assistants to the photographer are allegedly adults but often seem more like children. The parents are cooler than parents usually are in a story about a fifteen-year-old, which is fine, I guess, but felt maybe a little forced--like maybe the author really wants to be the cool dad or uncle?

I've heard good things about this author, so I'd definitely read another book by him even though this one was only okay.

+10 Task (#593 on the Best Time Travel Fiction list - https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/2..., which Heather used in Post 192)
+ 5 Prizeworthy (World Fantasy Award)
+10 Review

Task total: 25
Grand total: 475

20.5 Singled Out

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell

I saw this book mentioned in my GR group and remembered it as one of my favorite books as a kid. Knowing I had a long drive, I downloaded the audiobook from the library and was transported back to this story for the three or four hours that the audio lasted. I will recommend this book to my nine-year-old, who has just had a class unit on survivors where they did exercises like picking which items they'd most want to have if they were marooned on an island.

Here, the heroine finds herself left behind on her island home when the rest of her tribe decides to evacuate with some white folks who show up in a ship and offer to move them to the mainland (California?).

This book has a bit of required suspension of disbelief involved--the heroine is able to make a functional bow and arrow for herself by remembering watching tribe members make them even though she never actually learned how and would have been forbidden to make such a thing by the rules of her tribe. Still, it's compelling to see her figure out how to live by herself.

The writing is sparse and the story moves along quickly; I'm not sure I would have liked this as much if it didn't come with a bunch of hazy but warm memories of loving the book as a child of nine or ten. Recommended to kids wanting to read something a little different from today's YA fantasies and boarding school dramas.

+20 Task
+10 Review
+15 Combo (10.5, 20.7, 20.10)
+15 Prizeworthy (Newberry, Lewis Carroll, Nene)
+5 Oldies

Task total: 65
Grand total: 450

20.7 Month in Country

Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire

This was my least favorite of the three books in this series, but I still enjoyed the author's writing style and fantastical worlds. This book isn't quite creepily dark as the previous two books, but the candy-coated world featured here still has its moments. There's relatively positive discussion of body image and weight with one of the protagonists (occasionally to the point of it feeling like a single-issue defining characteristic) that was overall nice to see in a story like this one.

Also, unlike the first book that focused on concept and the second book that focused on a specific world and characters, this book is more of a quest or mission book. The group needs to go do certain tasks to try to prevent a bad thing from happening and doing so requires running around to different places to obtain the needed objects/information/etc. Quests are always in danger of becoming tiresome, but the inclusion of visits to different worlds and further explanation of the makeup of different worlds in this series's universe kept the book enjoyable.

The narrator has changed again, but was otherwise fine if somewhat less memorable than the first narrator or the author (who read the second book).

+20 Task (174 pp.)
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.2)

Task total: 35
Grand total: 385

20.7 Month in Country

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire

This is my favorite of the three books so far in this series. I love the willingness of the author to create a world that these girls find their way to that is dark and that they nonetheless love and want to stay in. The story is wonderfully creepy and achingly emotional. Although the story is something of a prequel to the first book in the series, I think I liked it better as a follow up instead. It could be read as a stand-alone, but the books are so short, you may as well read all three.

The author does more with the characters in this book than she did with the first. In the first book, most of the oxygen was sucked up by concept and not much was left in a sub-200-pager for character development. With the addition of this novella to the first, we get to know the characters much better as well as getting much more of a feel for one of the worlds. This also builds for a strong continuation of the series as long as the author has more ideas for cool worlds to explore.

This audio was read by the author, who did a great job.

+20 Task (187 pp.)
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.2)
+5 Prizeworthy (ALA Alex)

Task total: 40
Grand total: 350

20.7 Month in Country

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

I plowed through this series one after another in audio format during some long drives. The three books that are available are each short novellas--eventually, perhaps the series will be collected into one long volume. The concept here is delightful--there are lots of doorways and passageways to all different worlds and something in certain children causes them to discover the passage to just the right world for them. This story tells of those children who went through such a door, but for one reason or another ended up back in our world despite fervently wishing to return to their fantasy world. But these fantasies aren't all candy and rainbows (though at least one is); some are darker underworlds of vampires and skeletons.

The narrator for these isn't consistent across the three books, so I just like to be warned about that going in. That works fine here since each book has a very different focus, but it can still be surprising if you've begun to associate a narrator's voice with a certain story.

+20 Task (169 pp.)
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.2)
+15 Prizeworthy (Hugo, Nebula, Locus)

Task total: 50
Grand total: 310

20.5 Singled Out

Sula by Toni Morrison

I wanted to love this. I remember reading it a long time ago and thinking it was a powerful book, but I could remember nothing about it when I saw that the author had read the audiobook version. Unfortunately, no one told Toni Morrison that she had to keep her mouth close to the microphone to get a good recording. The production quality meant that even with the volume all the way up on my phone, I often could barely make out the author's voice.

Some of the descriptions are so amazingly spot-on. The girls walking past men at an ice cream shop and feeling their eyes on them. The way that small town gossip just circulates and penetrates. The way the odds are stacked against black women.

And the language, oh, the language.

But I didn't love this the way I've really loved some of Morrison's other books. Maybe it just depressed me by showing how little has changed since this book was published in 1973. I felt like this story could have been written today with only minor changes in technology and location.

+20 Task
+10 Review
+15 Combo (10.5, 20.4, 20.7)
+5 Prizeworthy (Audie Award)
+5 Oldies (1973)

Task total: 55
Grand total: 260

20.4 Birdsong

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

This is a perfect choice for my bookclub -- strong female characters, interesting history, pat and complete resolution, nothing too deep, but enough to talk about with the group.

Overall, I liked the book--it was gripping and I liked the characters. I'm a sucker for a romantic interest with a brogue (Scottish in this instance). The ending was too neat and overly clever for its own good, but my book club will eat that right up.

The narrator was fine if somewhat unmemorable. She kept me listening through a day that involved over six hours on the road, so that means she wasn't terrible. And she had enough brogue in her voice to bring the Scottish character alive to some extent. Generally, the book translates well to audio format because it's telling the personal stories of the two main characters (Charlie in 1947 and Eve in 1915).

I'm looking forward to being able to go to book club and talk about this one. So often I am the curmudgeon who doesn't like the book we read; this time I can just complain about the ending being too cute.

+20 Task (1915/1947)
+10 Review
+5 Jumbo (532 pp.)

Task total: 35
Grand total (I think, after adjustments): 205