Joanna’s
Comments
(group member since Nov 17, 2010)
Joanna’s
comments
from the Reading with Style group.
Showing 1,721-1,740 of 2,307
In Tooth and Nail by Ian Rankin:To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Also:
"He was thinking of the character in a Dickens book he'd read a long time ago, a schoolteacher who wanted facts and nothing but."
I believe this is a reference to Tom Gadgrind from Hard Times by Charles Dickens
Also:
Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
King Ludd by Andrew Sinclair
Krista wrote: "Karen Michele wrote: "20.10 - Canonical - Liz M’s Task:North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
+20 Task
+35 Combo: 10.2 – Women's Lit / 10.3 – Borrowing from the Mods..."
I'm about 2/3 of the way through it and am enjoying it a lot. I haven't read Gaskell before, but it's surprisingly lively and interesting.
Valerie wrote: "20.2 SeriesThe Mark of the Midnight Manzanilla by Lauren Willig
this book is part of the "Pink Carnation" series which has been approved.
+20 task
______
20
Runn..."
+5 Combo 10.6 (author has a J.D.)
20.5 GerminalGod's Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembène
+20 Task (about a strike)
+5 Combo (20.4)
+0 Award winner (but it should be -- the book is excellent)
Task total: 25
Grand total: 55
20.1 ZolaArms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw
+20 Task (pub. 1894)
+10 Not a novel (play)
Task total: 30
Grand total: 30
15.10 A to ZW-B
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
Task total: 30
+100 A to Z finish
Grand total: 865 (I think; I am on my phone so having trouble checking for sure)
That's it for the season. Thank you to the moderators for all the work making this do much fun.
20.1 RwS AnniversaryThe Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Review:
I listened to this audiobook with my five-year-old son during some long car rides. He's a Tolkien fan -- He's already heard the story told, then the book read aloud, then watched the cartoon version of the movie. He dressed up as Smaug for Halloween one year. He built a complicated Lego model of Bilbo's house. So he was familiar with the story. We enjoyed listening to this production. The narrator does a fine job with changes in cadence and voice to make the story entertaining in audio format. It had been a long time since I'd read the book, so it was great to revisit the language here and hear the story told. It also made it more fun to play with the Hobbit Legos having just read the story.
+20 Task (pub. 1937)
+10 Review
+10 Oldies
+10 Combo (20.4, 20.9)
Task total: 50
Grand total: 735
You can read these in any order, correct?
15.9 A to ZS-C
So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures by Maureen Corrigan
Task total: 30
Grand total: 685
20.5 Mystery WomenMaisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear
Review:
This book wanted to be too many things at once. It was a historical fiction WWI piece telling a woman's story as a nurse in France. But it also wanted to be a mystery. But all the characters around Maisie are such true-hearted loving folks -- her long-suffering father, her benevolent employers, her sidekick. Maisie has such amazing empathy that she can imitate the body posture of those she is speaking with and feel what they are feeling. I found this "skill" hard to believe in and sort of trite. Still, despite these complaints, I enjoyed the book and would be interested in reading the next in the series.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+15 Combo (10.4 - 75% UK, though some parts were in France, I think it was less than 25%; 20.3, 20.8 - b. UK, emigrated to USA 1990)
Task total: 45
Grand total: 655
What do you think is the nationality of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni? She was born in India, Wikipedia lists her nationality as "India, US," she now lives in Houston.
A plan of sorts:Africa - South Africa: Ways of Dying by Zakes Mda (A, B?, C)
Asia - Eastern - Japan: The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami (A, B, C?)
Asia - Western - India: The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh (A, B, C)
The Caribbean -
Cuba: Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy by Carlos Eire (A, B?, C)
South America - Columbia: No Lost Causes by Alvaro Uribe Velez (A, B, C)
Europe - Russia: Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (A, B, C)
European Union - UK: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson (A, B, C?)
Middle East - Israel: Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages by Guy Deutscher (A, B)
North America - USA: The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor by William Langewiesche (A, B)
Oceania - Australia: An Open Swimmer by Tim Winton (A, B, C)
Central America - Mexico: The Double Flame: Love and Eroticism by Octavio Paz (A, B)
20.8 Exiles and EmigrantsMadame Curie: A Biography by Eve Curie
Review:
What a wonderful tribute to her mother! This biography of Madame Curie, written soon after her death by her youngest daughter, is lively, highly engaging, and a lovely book. The collection of personal letters used to give voice to Madame Curie's personal thoughts combined with all the personal stories that family and friends were willing to share make this extremely readable. I knew little of Madame Curie's personal story and had forgotten that her husband died so early in their lives (and with such tragedy). I have no idea if this book has much to add to general knowledge of the scientists, but I found it both enlightening and heartwarming. Highly recommended for readers of biographies.
+20 Task (b. France; eventually settled in US)
+10 Review
+10 Combo (20.1 - pub. 1936; 20.9 - lived to be almost 103!)
+10 Oldies
Task total: 50
Grand total: 560
10.10 Group ReadsThe New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
Review:
I'm torn about how to rate this book. On the one hand, it's well researched, engaging to read, and highlights an important social issue: mass incarceration and the way that underlying racism impacts the criminal justice system, particularly with regard to the "War on Drugs". On the other hand, as critics have pointed out, the book seems to ignore major economic and social factors in making its argument. The book almost entirely ignores the violence associated with mass incarceration and with drug crime as well. Alexander focuses on nonviolent offenders, but ignores the fact that nonviolent drug offenders are actually less than 25% of the prison population.
While I understand that Alexander wants to focus not only on prisoners but also on those under prison supervision (probation and parole), it's still a misleading presentation. Moreover, the economic realities (and the racist/colonialist underpinnings of these realities) that feed into the system of mass incarceration and criminal justice cannot be ignored.
The book did lead me to read some of its reviews and also critiques. In particular, I enjoyed this article in the New York University Law Review.
I'm glad to have read this book, I'm glad that it seems to be causing even people who ideologically disagree with Alexander to think about these issues, but I'm also sad to see a book with this many flaws be the one that is the breakout success story in this way.
+10 Task
+10 Review
Task total: 20
Grand total: 510
20.10 Goodreads FeatureThe Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
Review:
I really wanted to like this book. And once I got through the first third, I found it engrossing. But in the end, I don't think I really liked it. I never liked the main character, didn't like the romance at the heart of the story, and felt the effort to show the Japanese perspective was off somehow.
Also, the flashback and switching around in time structure never quite held together for me. Just when I would feel fully engrossed in a story, yank, we'd be back to a part of the story that I didn't care so much about.
I listened to this as an audiobook. Perhaps I would have liked it more if I'd read it in print.
+20 Task (Orfeo)
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.9)
Task total: 35
Grand total: 490
10.7 Black HumorA Dirty Job by Christopher Moore
Review:
This was a wonderfully diverting book with just the right balance of zany characters and situations with real heart and something to say about death in our society. I liked this the best of the Christopher Moore books I've read (which include Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, Practical Demonkeeping, and The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror). The book teeters on the edge of being a bit too clever for its own good, but it won me over with it's obvious heart and the way that Moore seems to really like these characters even at their most zany. I'll definitely read other books by this author when I'm looking for lighthearted fun books to sandwich between more serious reads.
+10 Task
+10 Review
Task total: 20
Grand total: 455
20.7 18th Century PlusThe White Doe of Rylstone: With the Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle by William Wordsworth
Review:
I'd never heard of this Wordsworth long form poem before. I just stumbled onto this one as I was looking for something published around this time for a reading challenge and found that this one was available in digital scan from Google books. That version has lovely illustrations, but hard to read text, so I ended up pulling up the text at archive.org instead.
I'm not a frequent reader of poetry, but I do especially like narrative poems as they are somewhat more accessible than something that's more abstract. This poem tells the story of the Norton rebellion against Queen Elizabeth in 1569, and focuses on Emily, the surviving daughter of the family after her father and brothers are all killed. The white doe of the title frames the story as an almost mystical animal that befriends Emily in her grief and continues to visit her grave after she dies.
I'm glad to have stumbled upon this poem. Every time I read poetry, I think I really should read more. I also enjoyed reading the commentary on the poem (from Wordsworth and the Cultivation of Women, linked on the Wikipedia page).
+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.4)
+15 Oldies (1815)
Task total: 50
Grand total: 435
