Apple’s Comments (group member since Aug 28, 2021)

Apple’s comments from the Reading with Style group.

15.25: WI 13/14 Travel the Pacific Rim
Read 10 books, from 10 different countries according to the list in post 2.

China Dream by Ma Jian
China

Post Total: 15
Season Total: 645

15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; 15.6; 15.7; 15.8; 15.9; 15.10
15.11; 15.12; 15.13; 15.14; 15.15; 15.16; 15.17; 15.18; 15.19; 15.20
15.21; 15.22; 15.23; 15.24; 15,25;
15.31; 15.32; 15.33; 15.34; 15.35; 15.36

Hmmm… I am going to defend myself by saying both my parents are English 😝🤣

15.36: SU 23 Sub-Challenge Summer - Favourites
Read 10 books that fit your favorite 20-point tasks from prior seasons. You must state the season and the task (number and brief description) when posting your book claim.

Winter 2010-11 20.8 - Krista's Choice: The Time of Your Life
New Year's Eve is often a time when people look back and review events that occurred during the past year and look forward to imagine how they can shape the upcoming year. In honor of that tradition, read a Time-Travel book. The character(s) in the book must actually do some time-traveling.

About Time by Jodi Taylor

Post Total: 15
Season Total: 630

15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; 15.6; 15.7; 15.8; 15.9; 15.10
15.11; 15.12; 15.13; 15.14; 15.15; 15.16; 15.17; 15.18; 15.19; 15.20
15.21; 15.22; 15.23; 15.24;
15.31; 15.32; 15.33; 15.34; 15.35; 15.36

15.35: SU 23 Sub-Challenge Summer - Favourites
Read 10 books that fit your favorite 20-point tasks from prior seasons. You must state the season and the task (number and brief description) when posting your book claim.

Summer 2014 20.8 - A Funny Story - Elizabeth (Alaska)'s Task:
Read a book shelved as comedy at least 40 times.

Starter Villain by John Scalzi
Shelved as comedy 190 times

Post Total: 15
Season Total: 615

15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; 15.6; 15.7; 15.8; 15.9; 15.10
15.11; 15.12; 15.13; 15.14; 15.15; 15.16; 15.17; 15.18; 15.19; 15.20
15.21; 15.22; 15.23; 15.24;
15.31; 15.32; 15.33; 15.34; 15.35;

15.34: SU 23 Sub-Challenge Summer - Favourites
Read 10 books that fit your favorite 20-point tasks from prior seasons. You must state the season and the task (number and brief description) when posting your book claim.

Spring 2014 20.8 - Spring Fling - Kate S's Task: Read a book with a title which contains a 5 (or more) letter word with only one vowel. For example: Oliver Twist (twist), A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (short), The First Man in Rome (first).

The End of All Things by John Scalzi
Things

Post Total: 15
Season Total: 600

15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; 15.6; 15.7; 15.8; 15.9; 15.10
15.11; 15.12; 15.13; 15.14; 15.15; 15.16; 15.17; 15.18; 15.19; 15.20
15.21; 15.22; 15.23; 15.24;
15.31; 15.32; 15.33;15.34;

15.24: WI 13/14 Travel the Pacific Rim
Read 10 books, from 10 different countries according to the list in post 2.

Slow Noodles: A Cambodian Memoir of Love, Loss, and Family Recipes by Chantha Nguon
Cambodia

Post Total: 15
Season Total: 585

15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; 15.6; 15.7; 15.8; 15.9; 15.10
15.11; 15.12; 15.13; 15.14; 15.15; 15.16; 15.17; 15.18; 15.19; 15.20
15.21; 15.22; 15.23; 15.24;
15.31; 15.32; 15.33;

15.33: SU 23 Sub-Challenge Summer - Favourites
Read 10 books that fit your favorite 20-point tasks from prior seasons. You must state the season and the task (number and brief description) when posting your book claim.

Fall 2017 20.8 Mother-Daughter (Amanda's Task):
My daughter's birthday is September 1st, my mother's birthday would have been October 3. Read a book about mother daughter relationships. This book can be fiction or non-fiction, but a mother daughter relationship must be central to the story. If the relationship isn't clear from the description on Goodreads, please post the connection in the appropriate task thread.

Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout

+15 task
+5 oldies

Post Total:20
Season Total: 570

15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; 15.6; 15.7; 15.8; 15.9; 15.10
15.11; 15.12; 15.13; 15.14; 15.15; 15.16; 15.17; 15.18; 15.19; 15.20
15.21; 15.22; 15.23;
15.31; 15.32; 15.33;

15.32: SU 23 Sub-Challenge Summer - Favourites
Read 10 books that fit your favorite 20-point tasks from prior seasons. You must state the season and the task (number and brief description) when posting your book claim.

Winter 2015-16 20.7 Feminism (Louise Bro's Task)
In February it is 60 years since Judith Butler was born and 10 years since Betty Friedan died.
Read One of the top 300 books from this list of feminist fiction.

Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid
#240

+15 task
+5 oldies

Post Total:20
Season Total: 550

15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; 15.6; 15.7; 15.8; 15.9; 15.10
15.11; 15.12; 15.13; 15.14; 15.15; 15.16; 15.17; 15.18; 15.19; 15.20
15.21; 15.22; 15.23;
15.31; 15.32;

I had planned another Celebration of Styles, but am playing with my choices

I wanted to do some sci fi, so had thought of doing Growing Genres, but I am going to try to get it into a Pick n Mix plan instead so I am not as constrained by dates.

Am also loving going through all the old 20pt tasks, so might do another Favourites.

I think I just did a few too many heavy books at once - Nth Korea, STH Korea, Cambodia and Russia - and I need a more unrealistic head space for a bit….

I think the books were all $2 or $3 each, and I don't mind paying that even if I don't like the book and just pass it on.

Opportunity shop. I believe you call them thrift stores.

Yesterday we had a family fun day out, which involved 2 op shops, and 2 book shops, the second of which I have been trying to get to for quite a while as it focuses on BIPOC authors (https://amplifybookstore.com ).

Needless to say, I picked up a few books, which were:
Secondhand books:
The Book of Goose
The Colour of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother
Long Island
Me Talk Pretty One Day
Red Mars
Truth & Beauty
The Bridge on the Drina

New Books:
Excellent Women
Letter from an Unknown Woman and Other Stories
Crossing the Mangrove
The Wretched of the Earth
Pink Slime
So Long a LetterNo Sweetness Here and Other Stories
A Carnival of Atrocities

So I was definitely able to add some of the harder to find countries to my list of future reading!

It's halfway through Subchallenge Summer, how is everyone going?

Am I the only person in the group who reaches this point and no longer wants to read any of the books they chose at the start, and is now looking at how they can change it all up? It happens every season!

At least it gives me something to do on those days / nights when my husband is working, my now-adult daughter is locked up in her own room, and the cats don't feel like being cuddled, lol

15.31: SU 23 Sub-Challenge Summer - Favourites
Read 10 books that fit your favorite 20-point tasks from prior seasons. You must state the season and the task (number and brief description) when posting your book claim.

(Yes, this is off plan, but I said I was not good at sticking to plans! I needed the opportunity to read books that weren't world fiction)

SP25 20.1 Adaptation and Resilience: Read a book which has been made into a movie, miniseries, TV series, or which is a retelling of a previous book or story.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
The trailer is out and it will be in the cinema next March, and I will be there!

Post Total:15
Season Total: 530

15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; 15.6; 15.7; 15.8; 15.9; 15.10
15.11; 15.12; 15.13; 15.14; 15.15; 15.16; 15.17; 15.18; 15.19; 15.20
15.21; 15.22; 15.23;
15.31

Last of my finished books for now is a collection of short stories smuggled out of North Korea, written by an author known as Bandi.

The Accusation: Forbidden Stories from Inside North Korea has multiple stories about the hardships of life in North Korea, mostly under the regime of Kim Il-sung. There are no happy stories here, there is hunger, their is the paranoia of knowing everyone is watching everyone else, and any act of dissent could see you imprisoned, exiled or killed. Not only that, but the taint of one generation carries on to the next and the next, and this is often part of the tales presented here also.

Whilst this is not filled with the violence of the South American books above, it is still a hard read, because you know how much of it is a reality that the peoples of North Korea cannot escape. Even those who believed in the Party have seen their dreams squashed, and their souls are suffering.

Worth it if you can find it.

15.23: WI 13/14 Travel the Pacific Rim
Read 10 books, from 10 different countries according to the list in post 2.

The Accusation: Forbidden Stories from Inside North Korea by Bandi
North Korea

Post Total:15
Season Total: 515

15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; 15.6; 15.7; 15.8; 15.9; 15.10
15.11; 15.12; 15.13; 15.14; 15.15; 15.16; 15.17; 15.18; 15.19; 15.20
15.21; 15.22; 15.23

As I was reading This Mournable Body, I kept thinking it reminded me of something else I had read, then realised it was probably the first book in this series by Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions, which I read a very long time ago now.

Somehow I have missed the middle book of the trilogy, and now Tambu is a grown woman, unemployed after quitting her job at the advertising agency, and to be honest, she is not very likeablle. She is superior, scheming and dishonest. Some of this is due to race and the inequality that she feels because of it, some of it is undoubtedly due to being a woman as the lot of a woman is no better in Africa than it is in South America, and some of it will be due to the weight of expectation from her village and the education that has been allowed.

Their are many cracks in Tambu as a person, and her mental health, and this journey sees those cracks widen until they break, and then the need for Tambu rebuild herself again, but not in the image she has for herself.

Not a pleasurable read, but an honest one.

15.20: SP12 Around the World
Read 10 books, set in 10 different countries, with no continent being visited more than twice.

This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga
Zimbabwe

Nth America, 1
Sth America, 2
Africa, 2
Oceania, 2
Asia, 1
Europe, 2

+15 task
+100, 2nd Finisher Bonus

Post Total:115
Season Total: 500

15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; 15.6; 15.7; 15.8; 15.9; 15.10
15.11; 15.12; 15.13; 15.14; 15.15; 15.16; 15.17; 15.18; 15.19; 15.20
15.21; 15.22;

Yes, I know it is hard to believe that I had not read The Diary of a Young Girl, and when I opened it I really thought I might be wrong and had simply forgotten, but no, I really had not read this. (Trust me, the list of films that I have not seen upsets my husband far more than the list of books I haven't read will upset anyone here!)

What I was surprised at was Anne's humour and mischief, as well as her openness about all sorts of subjects - her relationships with others, her discussions of sex - it was all so unexpected.

Yes, their situation was bleak, and it is completely understandable that everyone would get on everyone else's nerves, but there was still generosity and celebration, and the fact that they managed to survive, with as much quality of life as was possible, was amazing. They didn't give up, but kept striving with things like learning, regardless of how bad things appeared to getting outside of their annexe. I don't know that many under such circumstances could have said the same.

15.19: SP12 Around the World
Read 10 books, set in 10 different countries, with no continent being visited more than twice.

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
qualifies for Germany/ Europe as Frank was born in Germany and it is her nationality

Nth America, 1
Sth America, 2
Africa, 1
Oceania, 2
Asia, 1
Europe, 2

+15 task
+5 oldies

Post Total: 20
Season Total: 385

15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; 15.6; 15.7; 15.8; 15.9; 15.10
15.11; 15.12; 15.13; 15.14; 15.15; 15.16; 15.17; 15.18; 15.19;
15.21; 15.22;