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WI 15-16 RwS Completed Tasks - Winter 15/16
From Post 1082Joanna wrote: "10.1 My task: Read one of the book club picks from my neighborhood book club
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Review:
This is the March select..."
+5 Combo 10.4 (#282 on list)
From Post 1086Karen Michele wrote: "10.9 Realistic Ratings
Refund: Stories by Karen E. Bender
+10 Task: 3.55
Grand Total: 1430"
+5 Combo 10.2
From Post 1089El wrote: "20.2 – Sigrid Undset
Jonkvrouw by Jean-Claude van Rijckeghem
+20 task – set around 1360-1405
Task total: 20
Grand total: 690"
+5 Combo 10.9-avg 3.62
From Post 1093El wrote: "20.9 – Winnie-the-Pooh
The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin by Maurice Leblanc (the most popular edition doesn't have extra in the title :( )
+10 combo (10.9 – 3.9 rating)"
I only see one combo for this. Should be +5 not +10.
From Post 1097Phoebe wrote: "10.1 Your Own Task
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Review: Having lost his father in the tragic event of 9/11, young Oskar Schell finds his..."
+5 Combo 10.9-3.97 avg
ETA: +5 Combo 20.10 EXTR from Extremely, A from and
Karen Michele wrote: "10.9 Realistic Ratings The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
+10 Task: 3.61
+15 Oldies: 1774
Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 1490"
+5 Combo 10.4-#334 on list
Amanda wrote: "10.7 Cozy HolidayThe Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie - 83 ratings
Obviously life is too busy at the moment, because this took me a lot longer than it sho..."
Sorry, Amanda, this is listed as YA Assignment at the BPL and has a lexile score of 690. Task, but no style points on this one.
20.8 Best of 2015Girl Waits with Gun by Amy Stewart
Review: Three sisters who live a somewhat secluded life in rural New Jersey in 1914 have a crash. They are in a buggy and are hit by an auto driven by a member of one of the wealthy families who run silk dying plants in the area. In trying to collect damages from him, the oldest sister, Constance Kopp, runs into a creepy character, who ends up threatening her and her sisters.
The story is told by Constance with some humor, but is also a marvelous snapshot of the status and struggles of women, particularly single women, of that time.
The story is made even more delicious by the fact it is based on a true incident. Constance conducts some effective sleuthing and introduces the idea of plea negotiations. In real life she became one of the country's first female deputy sheriffs.
I was a little disappointed that one of the story threads did not have any basis in fact. And I think the character of the youngest sister is a little overblown even for a teenager.
+20 task NPR list
+10 review
+5 series
+5 combo 10.9 - 3.80
Task total: 40
Grand Total: 555
20.10 Leap YearMrs. Pollifax on the China Station by Dorothy Gilman
I'm continuing my slow, lazy re-read of the Mrs. Pollifax series. They feel so dated, with a few cringe-worthy references, but at the same time, they're like comfort food - they remind me of being a kid pulling out my mom's mystery books - and they're such great commute books, light and enjoyable. In this installment, Mrs. Pollifax is sent to China to help provide cover in order to smuggle an engineer out of a labor camp. As always, the book is inspiring me to dig into some of the history - this takes place after Mao's death but before modern day Chinese history, so it brought up a lot of ideas and questions for me.
+20 task
+5 combo (10.7 - 11 users, main page)
+10 review
+5 oldies (1983)
+10 series (#6 in series, previously claimed this series for 10.7)
Task Total: 50
Grand Total: 565
10.10 Group ReadsBeing Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
I anticipated this being a morbid, depressing read. After all, it is about death and old age. But I have loved everything that Atul Gawande has written and this ended up being no exception. I found it much less depressing than expected. One of the most powerful themes that kept emerging is the idea of all of us as authors of our own life stories – he writes “In the end, people don’t view their life as merely the average of all its moments – which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens.” In a way, this makes the idea of dying and old age a little less intimidating.
+10 task
+10 review
Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 585
20.8 Best of 2015Descent by Tim Johnston
This is a book that I think benefitted from being read as a group. I had it on my to-read list, but I acquired it by convincing a friend she would enjoy reading it on the plane, causing her to buy it, then lend it to me. We then shared it with a friend who loves to read as much as we do. It was a quick read, engaging and well written, but didn’t grab me the way I anticipated. However, in discussing the book with my friends, I noticed a number of aspects I didn’t see at first, like themes of twin-ness and doubles. This added to my enjoyment of an otherwise just-okay book.
+20 task (on NPR list)
+15 combo (10.2, 10.9 - 3.64, 20.1)
+10 review
Task Total: 45
Grand Total: 630
15.8 DominosThe Seaside Letters by Denise Hunter
same word in title as 15.7
task total = 25pts
grand total = 470
20.2 Sigrid UndsetTime and Chance by Sharon Kay Penman
+20 task
+5 combo (10.2)
+5 jumbo (544 pp.)
+5 series
Task total 35
RWS finish 100
Grand total 750
20.10 Leap yearThe Bordeaux Betrayal by Ellen Crosby
20 task
5 real rate (3.64)
_____
35
Running total: 870
20.3 Toni MorrisonCitizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
Review: Wow! How to end? "It wasn't a match. It was a lesson." An emotional peek into the experience of being black in America (and the world). This book has won all sorts of awards and hopefully will create an understanding and open a dialogue.
One reviewer called part 6, a series of documentary film scripts, the weakest. I felt that it was powerful because most of us can play the background visuals in our heads--For example Katrina and Trayvon Martin. I listened on audio but I am going to have to purchase a paper copy be able to re-experience this powerful lesson in paced bits.
+20 Task
+5 combo 20.8 NYT list
+10 Review
Task total: 35
Grand Total: 590
20.10 Leap Year The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change by Jason Jennings
E X T R A is part of extraordinary in the GRE subtitle
This was a solid business book with a strong core idea, good supporting stories, bullet-point pull out points for taking action, clear writing, and an experienced author. Nothing struck me as new, but that was because new wasn't the point. The point was looking at what was currently succeeding - and individual examples had been in the business press before - and presenting it based on a deliberate review by trained researchers instead of an individual's more haphazard reading patterns or limited reading time. As such, it's a good collection of foundational ideas to apply to a business you are in.
+20 task
+10 review
+5 combo (10.9 3.85)
Task total: 35
Grand total: 2380
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs Lexile 890
+10 pts - Task (3.8)
+ 5 pts - Series
Task Total - 15 pts
Grand Total - 835 pts
10.8 Winter Solstice (Rebekah's Task)-Foundation's Edge by Isaac Asimov
Asimov was born in Russia
This volume was a full-fledged novel, but I almost missed the sparser novellas of the original three books that had been thirty years before. It felt clunky somehow. I liked the read anyway.
All the questions about well, is someone mentally manipulating me now? how about now? or is this really my thought over here? got tiresome, especially the mental gymnastics the characters were using to consider them. They were essential to the plot, though, and I do appreciate that. I don't think these characters will particularly stick in my mind, unfortunately, for all I spent longer with them.
The ending definitely felt like the book belonged with the others. I saw one of the points in the ending coming, but other parts of it I did not. And some of those parts felt tacked on, but they might be leading to the next book...
+10 task
+10 review
+5 oldies
+20 series (4th I've posted in a separate task)
+10 combo (10.2 No L, 10.3 Sci-Fi)
Task total: 55
Grand total: 2435
10.9 Realistic RatingsThe Body Artist by Don DeLillo
+10 task (3.21 rating)
+ 5 combo (20.1 - on pdf list)
Task total=15
Grand total=805
Task 10.3 – Science Fiction DayJanuary 2 is National Science Fiction Day. Read one of the top Science Fiction authors listed on Ranker.com
February 16, 2016: #80
Darwinia (1998) by Robert Charles Wilson (Goodreads Author) (Paperback, 372 pages)
Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel (1999)
+10 Task
+05 Combo (#10.9 Realistic Ratings)
Task Total: 10 + 05 = 15
Grand Total: 520 + 15 = 535
10.1 Design Your Own Task Marie (mariealex) | 200 commentsRead a book that contains illustrations
(defined here)
The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente
+10 Task
+10 Series (The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making read for this challenge)
Task total = 20
Points total = 190
10.9 Realistic Ratings Le sourire des pendus by Jérôme Camut and Nathalie Hug
average rating : 3.95
+10 Task
+5 Series
+10 Jumbo (751 pages)
Task total = 25
Points total = 215
Just saw that Citizen: An American Lyric was approved for 20.3.I'd like to add the combo +5 to that -- I posted it in post #525.
I now show my grand total as 870.
15.10 - DominoesWise Blood by Flannery O'Connor
(died same decade as 15.9- 1967 & 1964)
task =30
completion bonus= 100
All books in chain on Canon = 50 points
All books written by female authors = 25 points
grand total = 1150
10.4 Valentine's DayBel Canto by Ann Patchett
Review:
I should have a shelf for epilogues that have no place being a part of a book. I loved the characters. I loved the melodrama -- the operatic scope of this novel. Of course it wasn't realistic, but it didn't have to be. The mixing of the characters, the Stockholm syndrome of the hostages, the practically Utopian society that developed -- all of it was acceptable because the characters felt alive. I even accepted the real ending.
But the epilogue was almost enough to wreck the book. I hated it so much, I dredged up the old list (https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/7...) just so I could vote for this one.
Still, I loved everything about the book other than the weird epilogue enough that I ended up giving the book five stars anyway. The narrator for the audiobook gave an excellent performance.
+10 Task
+10 Review
+10 Combo (10.9 - 3.91; 20.1)
Task total: 30
RWS Finish: +100
Grand total: 1000
10.3 Science Fiction Day2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
#4 on list
+10 Task
+5 Series
+5 Oldies (pub. 1968)
Post total: 20 points
Total points: 1,375 points
10.10 Group ReadsBig Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani
+10 task
+5 series (Big Stone Gap #1)
+10 combos (10.2, 10.9)
Post total: 25 points
Total points: 1,400 points
20.4 Elfriede Jelinek (2004) - European woman Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968 by Heda Margolius Kovaly
Review: Under a Cruel Star is definitely more a story of the later years in the subtitle than the earlier ones. Not a typical Holocaust novel, the ghettos and concentration camps are merely introductory, although the ramifications thread through the rest of the story. It basically ends up as a cautionary tale – not of communism exactly, but of becoming complacent, of thinking groups of people will learn the lessons they so desperately should. It shows a part of human nature, most prevalent in groups rather than individuals, that is scary and awful. It’s also relevant to our time, with stories in Europe of anti-Semitism, ongoing problems in the United States… scary.
+20 Task (Czech woman, translated from Czech)
+10 Review
+5 Oldies (1986)
+5 Combo (20.6 – set entirely in Prague (with something like 1 page somewhere in Poland from 1941-1968)
Task Total: 40
Grand Total: 1815
10.9 Realistic RatingsHer Mad Hatter by Marie Hall
Review: I’m not sure what I was expecting from this first entry in a fantasy romance series that seems to have a kind of cult following, but it wasn’t exactly what I got. The premise is fun – the Mad Hatter is a bad boy who needs to find love, and Alice has always believed in Wonderland and loved the Hatter. I thought it would actually almost turn out to be more erotica than romance, but it wasn’t – there was sex, but not all that much of it really and not very explicit. Instead, the story was much darker than I expected, and the end, while happy as any romance novel should be, really threw me off. I might pick up the next one in the series, but I don’t think I’d pay for it.
+10 Task (3.79)
+5 Series
+10 Review
Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 1840
10.3 Sci Fi DayBrightness Falls from the Air by James Tiptree Jr.
Review: This one was rough for me to get through. It wasn’t that the book is bad – not exactly. It definitely didn’t click with ME, but it wasn’t that anything was explicitly wrong with it. The author was one I’d heard a lot about, and I felt like I should read something by her (Tiptree is a pen name, and one that was hidden for a number of years). Anyway, Tiptree is more well known for writing short stories, and I could see how she excelled in that realm. The bare bones of this novel were great – the writing was good, the characters were fascinating, and the world was interesting. The problem I had was with the plot. It was convoluted and didn’t make much sense to me, so I had a hard time making my way through it in its entirety. I actually ended up reading a short story by Tiptree in an anthology I was reading concurrently with this, and I wish I’d picked up a short story collection instead.
+10 Task
+10 Review
+5 Oldies (1985)
+5 Combo (10.9 – 3.74)
Task Total: 30
Grand Total: 1870
This was an oops;)Thanks for the added points, too!
20.9 Winnie-the-Pooh The House of the Vampire by George Sylvester Viereck
+20 Task: 1907
+ 5 Combo: 10.9 Realistic Ratings (3.24)
+10 Oldies
Task Total: 35
Grand Total: 1570
20.9 Winnie-the-Pooh The Ballad of the White Horse by G.K. Chesterton
+20 Task: 1911
+10 Oldies
Task Total: 30
Grand Total: 1600
20.3-Toni Morrison (1993)Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones
+20 Task
+ 5 Combo: 20.1-Grazia Deledda (1926)
Task Total: 25
Grand Total: 1625
10.5 Favorite authorsSleeping Murder by Agatha Christie
10 task
5 oldie
5 series
5 cozy (28x)
5 real ratings (3.90)
_____
30
Running total: 900
From Post 1121Lagullande wrote: "10.9-Realistic Ratings
Two Histories of England by Charles Dickens
+10 task (ave rating 3.60)
Post total: 10
RwS Total: 525
Dominoes Total: 180
Grand Total: 705"
+5 Combo 20.1
From Post 1136Valerie wrote: "20.10 Leap year
The Bordeaux Betrayal by Ellen Crosby
20 task
5 real rate (3.64)
_____
35
Running total: 870"
+5 Combo (10.7)
+5 Series
From Post 1115Rosemary wrote: "10.9 - Realistic Ratings
London Fields by Martin Amis
The story of Nicola Six, a murderee in search of a murderer, and the men she picks out and manipulates to bring a..."
+5 Oldies
From Post 1121Lagullande wrote: "10.9-Realistic Ratings
Two Histories of England by Charles Dickens
+10 task (ave rating 3.60)
Post total: 10
RwS Total: 525
Dominoes Total: 180
Grand Total: 705"
+15 Oldies
From Post 1118Katy wrote: "10.3 Science Fiction Day
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
I ended up loving this book, somewhat unexpectedly. In the first part of the book we find out that all life on e...
+5 combo (10.9 - 3.98, 20.8)"
Should be +10 Combo
Kath wrote: "20.2 Sigrid UndsetTime and Chance by Sharon Kay Penman
+20 task
+5 combo (10.2)
+5 jumbo (544 pp.)
+5 series
Task total 35
RWS finish 100
Grand total 750"
I am sorry, Kath. I do not show a claim for a book for 20.6-Svetlana Alexievich-from you. If I overlooked it, please point me in the right direction with the post number. Thanks.
20.6 Svetlana AlexievichLeningrad: Siege and Symphony: The Story of the Great City Terrorized by Stalin, Starved by Hitler, Immortalized by Shostakovich by Brian Moynahan
Review:
When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, they quickly headed for Leningrad and cut off the supply routes into the city. The only way food and other supplies could be brought into Leningrad was to use boats to cross Lake Ladoga. When the weather turned frigid, they switched to trucking supplies across the ice, hoping the ice would hold. People were eating tree bark, sawdust, leather, cats, dogs, rats, and some even resorted to cannibalism during the long winter.
The Russian people also had to contend with the NKVD, the secret police, who arrested, tortured, and killed people on trumped up charges. Stalin was so paranoid that he had his most experienced officers shot by the NKVD which made the military position even more precarious against the more experienced Germans. Stalin, who came from a humble background, was especially harsh on the more cultured citizens of Leningrad. The composer Dmitri Shostakovich was always very nervous that he would be brought in for questioning by the NKVD if Stalin disapproved of his music.
Shostakovich and his family were evacuated from Leningrad in the autumn of 1941, and he finished his Seventh Symphony, dedicating it to the city of Leningrad. Although it was performed in several other cities first, the performance in Leningrad on August 9, 1942 was the most unforgettable. Since most of the musicians in the city had been either evacuated or died from hunger, it was difficult to put together an orchestra of over 100 musicians to play the 80 minute symphony. The brass and the woodwinds were too weak to blow their instruments without fainting, and the strings were exhausted from holding their violins. Extra food rations were given to them so the skeletal musicians managed to play. The Seventh Symphony announced to the world that Leningrad would endure. It also showed what joy and hope that music can bring under the most tragic of circumstances.
The book also tells of the difficult winter faced by the soldiers of both sides since they had inadequate food, clothes, fuel, and supplies. In January 1943 the siege of Leningrad was broken, although the city was not entirely liberated until 1944.
The author includes an enormous amount of detail as he covers the time from June 1941 to August 1942. This gave a good sense of what the people of Leningrad and the soldiers had to endure. It probably could have been edited down a bit since some of the stories were repetitious. The strength of this moving account of the siege of Leningrad is that the history is approached from many different angles.
+20 task
+10 combo (10.8 Winter Solstice, 10.9 Realistic Rating of 3.92)
+10 review
Task total: 40
Grand total: 830
10.6 Australia DayThat Deadman Dance by Kim Scott
+10 Task
+10 Combo (10.2, 10.9)
+100 RwS Finish
+200 Mega Finish
Post Total: 320
Season Total: 2370
15.2 DominoesFugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
+15 Task (author shares surname with 15.1 author)
Post Total: 15
Season Total: 2385
15.3 DominoesThe Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood
+15 Task (author born in same country as 15.2 author)
Post Total: 15
Season Total: 2400
15.4 DominoesThe Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
+15 Task (book published same decade as 15.3)
Post Total: 15
Season Total: 2415
20.2 Sigrid UndsetThe Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
+20 Task (set in spring 1300)
+25 Oldies (1320)
+10 Jumbo (798 pages in MPE)
Post Total: 55
Season Total: 2470
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Reading with Style
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Louise Bro wrote: "20.9 Winnie-the-Pooh
Katherine by Anya Seton
Book pub. 1954
Review:
I've always been a bit wary of historical fiction (despite not having read much in this genre, ty..."
+5 Combo 20.1