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FA 18 Completed Tasks
From Post 515Coralie wrote: "20.3 Birds Without Wings
Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene
+20 task
+ 5 Combo 10.5 (penguin)
+ 5 Oldie (published 1969)
Task Total: 30
Season Total: 1165"
+5 Combo 20.4
From post 532Don (The Book Guy) wrote: "20.1 War's End
The Black Camel by Earl Derr Biggers, 4th in Charlie Chan mysteries, pub. 1929.
+20 Task
+10 Oldies
+5 Combo, 10.2
Task Total: 35
Grand Total: 100"
+5 Combo 10.6
20.3 Birds without WingsTravels With My Aunt by Graham Greene
Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager in his fifties, meets his Aunt Augusta for the first time since he was a baby, at his mother’s funeral. Before he knows where he is, this irrepressible aunt has lured him away from his beloved dahlias and involved him in shady dealings and journeys with ulterior motives, first to Brighton, then on the Orient Express to Istanbul.
I thought this was hilarious, especially in the beginning. Aunt Augusta with her devoted lovers is a great character. The story gets a little lost towards the end, perhaps, but after all it’s the journey that’s important, not the destination.
Note: I saw that a couple of posts back, points were given for a combo with 20.4, but I think that must be a mistake because the whole story happens within one year. However, Aunt Augusta is a single female, so I'm claiming 20.5.
+20 Task
+10 Combo (10.5 the linked edition is Penguin, 20.5)
+10 Review
+ 5 Oldies (1969)
Task Total: 45
Season Total: 805
20.6 The Stone CarversLincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
This book....argh! It was like seeing one of Picasso's cubist paintings--disjointed boxes that have clues contained in them and after a prolonged study, you start to see a person and a guitar and a table and perhaps a newspaper and you feel like, "Oh, that's cool, I get it now," and you like it because you had to work at it to uncover the key to understanding it, not necessarily because you actually like it.
I listened to about five minutes of this book and couldn't understand it to save my life. I was SO confused. So decided to read it with the good old eyeballs. Equally confused. At the 25% mark, I detested this book, but refused to let it beat me. I have too many friends who have raved about it to give up. At the 66% mark, I still disliked it but the picture was starting to come together. There was perhaps ten percent of this book that I absolutely loved and by the end I can say that I "got" what Saunders was trying to do--it was novel, it was ambitious, it was outside the box. But just like that Picasso painting that I can now "see", just because I put in the work to understand it doesn't mean I like it.
I give it 2.75 stars, rounded up to 3.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Prizeworthy
+5 Combo (10.5--https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...)
Task total: 40
Season total: 2005
Rosemary wrote: "20.3 Birds without WingsTravels With My Aunt by Graham Greene
Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager in his fifties, meets his Aunt Augusta for the first time since he ..."
I agree with Rosemary. I will accept points for combo with 20.5 but it is not in two time periods. Are you confusing it with Around the World with Auntie Mame which has a somewhat similar theme but is looking back into the past?
Coralie wrote: "I agree with Rosemary. I will accept points for combo with 20.5 but it is not in two time periods. "I think this may be my fault, and a faulty finger entry. I'm guessing I meant to enter it for 20.5, and not 20.4. Same points, I believe.
20.10 Fall EquinoxThe Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
+20 task
+20 combo (10.4, 10.5, 20.5, 20.7)
+5 oldie
Task Total: 45
Grand Total: 545
10.6 NoirA Bespoke Murder by Edward Marston
The sinking of the Lusitania was an interesting way to introduce two characters where there is a possible romantic sub-plot, but also to set the scene of anti-German London in the first year of WWI. As to the mystery, I was so smug to think it was obvious who the perpetrator was. And then I decided maybe not so obvious, but that the person was still connected in some way. I certainly did not give Marston enough credit.
This is first in a series. The writing style is good enough. The characterizations aren't marvelous, but they're not stinko either. I need to remind myself that great characterization is not why one reads mysteries, and it's an extra when I do get them.
This was as much period fiction as it was a mystery, and for that I got more than I paid for. I don't know how accurate are the historical aspects, but civilian life in London during this early period is of interest. As the series continues during this time period I'll be happy to check in again. I have too much in front of me to do it soon, however. This is a solid 3-stars, maybe toward the higher end of that group for me.
+10 Task
+10 Review
+ 5 Combo (10.2)
Task Total = 25
Season total = 645
10.1 Favorite ListsThe Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
+10 task (#24 on Best Books Ever, claimed in post 698
+15 prizeworthy
+5 oldie
Task Total: 30
Grand Total: 575
Task 15.2 AbBY Chronological Moving backwards in time
1955-1959
Butchers Hill (Tess Monaghan #3) (1998) by Laura Lippman
Author was Born: 1959
Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 340 + 20 = 360
Task 10.9 = 9, 10, 11 This challenge includes the 9th, 10th and 11th months of the year. Read a book with a 9-, 10-, or 11-letter word in the title.
Sum mon ing
The Summoning (1993) by Bentley Little (Mass Market Paperback, 542 pages)
+10 Task
+05 Oldies -25 to 75 years old: (1943-1993)
+05 Jumbo 500-699 Pages
Task Total: 10 + 05 + 05 = 20
Grand Total: 360 + 20 = 380
20.1 War’s EndRickshaw Boy by Lao She
+20 task
+10 Oldies (publishes 1937)
Task Total: 30
Season Total: 1290
20.3 Birds without WingsThe Gendarme by Mark Mustian
shelved as Turkey 22x
+20 Task
+10 Combo (10.5 - above edition by Penguin; 20.4 - 'present' time being 1990 with flashbacks to Armenian genocide being approx 1914-1923)
+5 Prizeworthy
Post Total: 35
Season Total: 675
10.2 Next?The Sixth Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
+10 task
+10 Oldies (publishes 1937)
Task Total: 10
Season Total: 1300
20.10 VowelsThe Four Legendary Kingdoms by Matthew Reilly
This borrowed book was a feel good action movie (with the typical violence level of one) that kind of felt like a cross between The Hunger Games movie with the campy Mortal Kombat movie (including the world level importance of the outcome) and a bit of the puzzle nature of National Treasure. It was straightforward and you knew the hero, who was warm hearted as well as physically effective, was going to win at the end, somehow, but the twists of the challenges and the actual action scenes kept me entertained. Apparently it is part of a series of similar brain candy that I might check on at the used bookstore.
+20 task
+10 review
+10 combos (10.9, 10.2)
Task total: 40
Grand total: 1495
20.8 AutumnDiamonds Are Forever by Ian Fleming
The plot was interesting with appropriate highs and lows of tension and the writing style continued to have delightful turns of phrase. I continue to be amused by the pieces of the character that either aren't used (as far as I know) or are hard to show in a movie. Bond flopping on to the bed in the air conditioned room after walking through the Vegas heat. Bond actually having a serious conversation about having kids after he retired because it wouldn't be fair to them otherwise. Bond planning and rehearsing in his mind how a confrontation might go instead of just being captured (which was in other books as well). And so forth. Fleming went with a more "damaged" female stereotype this time (fascinated by and able to be healed by Bond of course, *eyeroll*) and a Bond who actually thought before he involved himself because it would be "the height of cruelty" to cast her aside later given her past.
Looking forward to the next one....
+20 task
+10 review
+5 oldies (1956)
+10 combo (10.2, 10.5)
Task total: 45
Grand total: 1540
20.2 To Conquer HellWar's Unwomanly Face by Svetlana Alexievich
This book was stunning, harrowing, devastating, and hopeful. It is a compendium of over 200 women's experiences of WWII. The original edition of the book which came out in the '80s is 100 pages shorter than the edition I read--the later publication was able to include several accounts which would have been banned before the dissolution of the Soviet Union (one woman asking, "Are you allowed to write about this? Before, you weren't..."). Not only were things censored by the state, women's husbands and family members encouraged these women to censor themselves...
This is one of the most beautiful and raw books that I've read in a long time. It took me nearly a month to read it--I'd have to set it aside because, despite the moments of (rare) humor and beauty, there was so much blood and death it was hard to bear. There was so much heartbreak contained in each tale, but there too was hope. ("Do you know how beautiful a morning at war can be? Before combat...You look and you know: this may be your last. The earth is so beautiful...And the air...And the dear sun...")
It was fascinating to hear these women's stories. This book was not only well-written, it was Important. 5 giant, gleaming stars.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+10 Prizeworthy
+5 Oldies (first published either 1983 or 1985--I've found both dates and don't know which is accurate)
+20 Combo (10.2; 10.5--https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3... ; 10.9, "unwomanly"=9 letters; 10.10--thank you for the amazing suggestion, Lalitha!)
Task total: 65
Season total: 2070
20.10 Fall EquinoxFuries of Calderon by Jim Butcher
+20 task
+20 Combo 10.2, 10.5 (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...), 10.6, 20.5
+ 5 Jumbo (504 pages)
Task Total: 45
Season Total: 1345
20.6 The Stone CarversMy 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
20.7 A Month in CountrySilently 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
20.2 To Conquer HellThe Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum
After reading books at a breakneck pace, I hit the wall with the 20th century event task. I picked up and put down so many books, mostly because they were too upsetting. Thus I found myself wandering the science stacks of my library, where I found this engaging, fascinating, and rather unnerving book.
It’s unsettling because, well, people are greedy and dumb. I wonder what miracle drug of today will be the banned poison of tomorrow, and how long and hard science will have to fight corruption to protect people.
So many things were going on in New York in that era. The corruption - replacing the dead-drunk coroner with a scientist was fought tooth and nail. Doctors were chloroforming people even though it tended to kill, radium was in energy drinks, carbon monoxide was offing people left and right, the government was deliberately poisoning people as part of prohibition, and it’s not like things were rosy when real booze was legal again. I made the mistake of sipping a beer while I read the chapter on grain alcohol and let me tell you it did not taste so great as I learned how Gettler and Freireich developed the first scale of intoxication.
I expected the book to be a bit bleak, but it was very entertaining and many times darkly funny. While plenty of nasty crimes occur, this book is focused on how those crimes led to new (or better documented) methodologies and less on grisly “true-crime”.
+20 task
+20 combo (10.3, 10.5 Penguin MPE, 10.9, 20.1)
+10 review
+5 award
Task total = 55
Season total = 1270
10.10 Group ReadsI Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Review
Wow I loved that ending! I don't think I've ever watched the whole movie but I could tell that it was totally different from the book. I also didn't think I'd like the book much but it was very engaging as it drew, extremely well, the atmosphere of isolation. What would happen if you're left all alone? The others around you only want to tear you apart so you must live alone and depend only on yourself. Yet still he dreams and he wishes...
In a world of monotonous horror there could be no salvation in wild dreaming. Horror he had adjusted to. But monotony was the greater obstacle...
It is awful to think what a person could get used to and that the worst thing is that what get you isn't the bad stuff but the everyday things. And in the end, nothing is worst or more horrifying than being the only different thing in the world.
+10 Task
+10 Combo (10.5 - I Am Legend by Bantam; 20.7 -160 pages)
+5 Prizeworthy
+10 Review
+5 Oldies (pub. 1954)
Post Total: 40
Season Total: 715
20.1 War's EndYou Have Been Warned: A Complete Guide to the Road by Donald McCullough
You Have Been Warned is a humorous book first published in 1935, warning people of the situations they may encounter when driving on Britain’s roads. For example: “the only difference between driving in London and parking in London is that you may not park on the same spot for more than two hours.”
It’s hard to believe that the roads really seemed so crowded all those years ago (when the book tells us there was one car for every 33 people in the UK — now it’s close to one car for every 2 people, plus the population has grown by 30%, so I make that 1.4 million cars in 1935 compared with 31 million now), but of course there were fewer roads and traffic controls, and no motorways. Anyway, it’s an amusing little book.
EDIT: looking at the group's FAQ, I'd say this is a book "primarily composed of illustrations" so it's treated like a graphic novel, no styles. Most pages of text have at least one illustration on them, and there are many full-page cartoons.
+20 Task (published in 1935 and set at that time)
Task Total: 20
Season Total: 825
10.5 Pet DayOne Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
this edition published by Penguin= https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...
I am not adverse to reading books featuring magic realism... but, I'm sorry to say, this novel was just too much of it. Not only was it difficult to keep the characters straight...so many of them have the SAME name... but sometimes I couldn't keep straight whether a character had already died or not...or maybe they have revived...or maybe its a memory, ugh. Despite these flaws (at least flaws for me), the novel does give a sense of time and place and the wonders of life and the perpetual search for knowledge. Has Marquez written anything that does not rely on magic realism? If so, I would probably enjoy it more than this because his style is to my taste. 3 stars
task=10
combo= 5 (20.10)
review=10
Oldie= 5 (1967)
prizeworthy=10
task total= 40
grand total= 695
Post 549 June wrote: "10.9- 9, 10, 11Duplicate Death by Georgette Heyer
Task: 10
Combo: 10 (10.2, 20.8)
Oldies: 5- first published in 1951
Post total: 25"
Also combo for 10.5, as this edition Duplicate death was published by Panther.
Post 551 June wrote: "15.5 AbBY ChronologicalSKIPPED 1910-1914
Date range: 1915-1919
Author born in 1918
Camilla by Madeleine L'Engle
Task total: 30"
I'm so sorry, June. This is shelved as YA Fic at BPL and it does not have a Lexile score. It doesn't qualify for AbBY.
Post 570 Coralie wrote: "10.2 Next?The Sixth Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
+10 task
+10 Oldies (publishes 1937)
Task Total: 10
Season Total: 1300"
We show this as pub'd in 2014, and the author's birth as 1968. Am I looking at the wrong book?
15.5 AbBYDate Range 1955-59
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
+30 Task (born 1959)
Post Total: 30
Season Total: 855
15.1 AbBY, Chronological 1880-1884Selected Poems by William Carlos Williams (born 1883)
+15 Task
Task total: 15
Season total: 2085
Task 20.7 A Month in the CountryDoctor Who: Horror of the Space Snakes (2012) by Gary Russell (Paperback, 160 pages)
No Styles because this is a YA tie-in short novel to the Doctor Who TV Series
Grand Total: 380 + 20 = 400
20.5 Singled OutA Wreath of Roses by Elizabeth Taylor
I'll just start by saying this is my least favorite of the 4 Taylor novels I've read thus far. I felt as if I was being required to read between the lines to understand a lot of what was going on. I'm an utter failure at reading between the lines. If you want me to know something you have to say it outright.
Everyone seemed to know that Richard Elton was not the right type, just from looking at him. One character was afraid for Camilla. What did they see? We're never told. Of course, the reader having been told he isn't the right type and Camilla might be in danger, we see inside the man's character. So they were right, but I still don't know why they knew what they knew.
None of the women are comfortable in their own skin - except for Frances, perhaps, and even she hides herself when in the company of others. Liz and Camilla were best friends during school and now as adults love each other still. But neither thinks the other has set herself in the right direction in life. Liz is married to a man Camilla despises while Liz thinks Camilla should be married.
In the end, I think Taylor just shows us we make it through life the best we can. We don't always have the opportunity to take life in the direction we'd most like, we might not be the person we'd like to be. But for me to come to those conclusions, I still have to read between the lines and that might not be what this is about at all. Three stars, because with Taylor's writing style, she will never be less.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+10 Combo (10.5 - A Wreath Of Roses; 20.8)
+ 5 Oldies (1949)
Task Total = 45
Season total = 690
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Post 570 Coralie wrote: "10.2 Next?The Sixth Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
+10 task
+10 Oldies (publishes 1937)
Task Total: 10
Season Total: 1300"
We show this as ..."
No, that is my error. I did not intend to claim any points for oldies.
15.2 AbBY, Chronological 1885-1889Selected Poems by T.S. Eliot (born 1888)
+20 Task
Task total: 20
Season total: 2105
20.9 Arkansas (Kate's Task)Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
#64 on the list
Here, as opposed to the last book I posted (One Hundred Years of Solitude), the author uses the right mixture of magical realism and reality that suit me. Here we delve into the mysteries of an African-American community... but more so into those of a particular family through several generations. In this sense, Song of Solomon and One Hundred Years are similar (minus the African-American touch.) Morrison's characters are much more defined and their motives more understandable. The magic realism is relatable to those episodes in our own lives that we can't explain. This is the fourth novel I have read by Morrison...I enjoyed them all but this is the best so far. 4 stars.
task=20
combo= 10 (10.5- this edition by Penguin- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... 20.4- the book changes several times from the then-present to earlier times in the family generations)
review=10
Oldie= 5 (1977)
prizeworthy=10
task total= 55
grand total= 750
15.3 AbBY, Chronological 1890-189450 Poems by E.E. Cummings (born 1894)
+20 Task
Task total: 20
Season total: 2125
10.7 Crazy Rich Asians...Or Not!A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro
I started listening to the audiobook of this, and had to give up. The shifts in time and character were too hard to follow in that version, and the narrator is entirely too light and pleasant in tone. This really works better as text.
I was not prepared for this at all. I selected it for its brevity - tired from reading so many books I wanted as little effort as possible. HA. While this was a short book, it was not easy. Perhaps it was the influence of my Halloween horror binge, but to me this was very much a ghost story. Etsuko is haunted by a past she cannot bear to face, but cannot escape.
There is a lot of deliberate obfuscation. After the final pages I was disoriented for a moment and then everything clicked.
In some ways this reminded me of Jude the Obscure - the worst parts are just stated simply, just sparely presented and then the novel carries on, leaving the reader reeling. But in Jude, things happen directly. Here, everything is approached obliquely. Estsuko tells a story about such a mundane, pointless thing with some disturbing detail casually mentioned. Those stark moments gather into the corners of the story, until finally it all snaps into focus.
This is a heartbreaking novel, but well worth the read.
+10 task
+10 review
+20 combo (10.5 A Pale View of Hills Penguin, 20.4 Immediately post-WWII and decades later, 20.5 Etsuko now and Sachiko then are widows, 20.7 183 pages MPE)
+5 award
+5 Oldie
+100 RwS finish
+200 Mega finish
Task total = 350
Season total = 1620
Ann wrote: "+100 RwS finish
+200 Mega finish"
Congratulations! Well done!
15.4 AbBY Chronological
1875-79
Anne Belinda by Patricia Wentworth (born 1877 according to the book's introduction; Goodreads has 1878)
Task total: 20
Season total: 165
1875-79
Anne Belinda by Patricia Wentworth (born 1877 according to the book's introduction; Goodreads has 1878)
Task total: 20
Season total: 165
10.9 - 9, 10, 11Dangerous Places by Susan Hunter
+10 task
+5 Combo (10.2)
Task total: 15
Grand total: 590
10.2 Next?Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
+10 Task
+5 Prize-Worthy (National Book Award for Fiction (2017))
Points this post: 15
RwS total: 235
AbBY total: -
Season Total: 235
10.9 9, 10, 11 (Norma's Task via Rebekah)Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston
+10 Task
Task Total: 10
Season Total: 785
15.4 AbBY Chronological1946-1950 Stephen King
From a Buick 8 by Stephen King
+20 Task (author born 1947)
Task Total: 20
Season Total: 815 (adjusted total)
15.8 AbBY Chronologic1946-1950
The Restless Heart: Finding Our Spiritual Home in Times of Loneliness by Ronald Rolheiser b. 1947 per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_...
+45 Task
Season Total: 525
20.10 VowelsHow to Traumatize Your Children: 7 Proven Methods to Help You Screw Up Your Kids Deliberately and with Skill by Knock Knock
+20 task
+5 combo (10.9)
Task total: 25
Grand total: 1565
20.2 To Conquer HellHiroshima by John Hersey
Review
A compelling historical piece of the Hiroshima bombing of '45 framed by taking a number of Hiroshima residents who underwent the horror and their lives in the aftermath of it all. In a way, this made it a little easier to read; the language was not dry and the personal interests due to the angles the author took made the telling very engaging. It just seem so unreal (to me) that any person could wrought such devastation to others... but it's true and whilst, some of these people would like to leave it behind without any further murmurs (here's the Asian mentality for you), there are others who know silence will not answer.
On another note, I appreciate the event was so horrific and that this book is told mostly from these specific good people but I felt that there is a lot of the real story missing here...? (view spoiler) (not really spoiler but just a question I had which I feel a little unsure about saying "out loud")
+20 Task
+15 Combo (10.3; 10.5 - Hiroshima by Penguin; 10.7 - author born in China; 10.9 -9 letters in Hiroshima)
+10 Review
+5 Oldies (pub. 1946)
Post Total: 50
Season Total: 765
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Reading with Style
Books mentioned in this topic
All the Single Ladies (other topics)Infidel (other topics)
Dragonfly in Amber (other topics)
The Big Sleep (other topics)
The Big Sleep (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Rebecca Traister (other topics)Ayaan Hirsi Ali (other topics)
Diana Gabaldon (other topics)
Raymond Chandler (other topics)
Samuel Richardson (other topics)
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Dangerous Mistakes by Susan Hunter
+20 task
+10 Combo (10.2, 10.9)
Task total: 30
Grand total: 565