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FA 19 Completed Tasks
20.5 Non-Linear(set entirely in Iran)
The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat
What the hell did I just read?
This short novel is bizarre. The author seems to have been deeply influenced by Edgar Allen Poe.... but do Iranian writers read Poe?
The work also has elements of Groundhog Day. The reader doesn't know if the beginning of the story is the end or if the end is the middle or neither. Is it real? Are things happening again or just being repeated in the imagination? Or is it all just a series of opium-induced hallucinations? Did a murder really take place? Was it two murders or none at all? I don't want to write anything close to a spoiler...so, I won't even give a thumbnail sketch....but suffice it to say....that there is a scene in the beginning that is macabre... and that I have never encountered in any other novel I have read.
I don't usually like horror stories....and my taste for Poe has been waning.... but I encourage you to try this one.
The edition I read also had helpful footnotes to explain some Persian customs and superstitions and such.
Four stars.
Task=20
Review=10
Oldie=10 (1935)
Task Total= 40
Grand Total=705
Tasks Completed: 23
10.1 (40); 10.3 (35); 10.4 (35); 10.5 (30); 10.6 (30); 10.7 (35); 10.8 (35)
15.1(E3)(15); 15.2(B2)(15); 15.3(F6)(15); 15.4(D4)(15); 15.5(F2)(20); 15.6(C4)(20); 15.7(D6)(20); 15.8 (E5)(20)
20.1 (35); 20.2 (65); 20.3 (35); 20.4 (50); 20.5 (40); 20.7 (35); 20.8 (45); 20.9 (40)
15.5 Pick 'n' Mix 2C6 Multiple Points of View (told in alternating points of view of 3 characters)
Lost Roses by Martha Hall Kelly
Task total: 20
Season total: 460
20.1 InauguralThe Overstory by Richard Powers
+20 Task (nominated)
+ 10 Combo (10.3, 20.4)
+ 5 Jumbo (502 pgs)
Task total = 35
Task Total: 35
Season Total: 140
10.5- Banned#209 on list
Ringworld by Larry Niven
Task: 10
Combo- 10 (10.1, 10.6- AYIE)
Oldies: first published in 1970 - 10
Post total: 30
Season total: 120
10.6- WW II# 150 on fiction list
The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
Task: 10
Combo- 15 (10.7- AEUI, 10,10, 20.5)
pages: 5 - 532
Post total: 30
Season total: 150
20.4- BoomerHow the García Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez
Task: 20
Combo: 10 ( 10.7- UIAE, 20.5)
Not a novel: 10
Oldies: 5- first published in 1991
Post total: 45
Season total: 195
20.2 Wolf HallKing Lear by William Shakespeare
Set in the 8th Century BC in England, "King Lear" is one of William Shakespeare's most popular tragedies. The main plot involves an aged King Lear, his three daughters, and the division of his kingdom. A subplot shows Gloucester and the treatment of his legitimate and illegitimate sons. Both fathers, King Lear and Gloucester, misjudge which of their children are trustworthy. Power, pride, justice, reality versus appearance, devotion, betrayal, blindness, self-knowledge, and redemption are some of the themes in this complex play. "King Lear" is a bloodbath with both the good and evil characters coming to violent ends in the chaos. As in all his plays, Shakespeare displays an acute understanding of human nature.
+20 task (pub in 17th Century)
+10 not a novel
+10 review
+25 oldie
Task total: 65
Season total: 525
15.3 PnM2 (Round 3)C4 - third person narrator
Naked Cruelty (Carmine Delmonico #3) by Colleen McCullough
+15 Task
Post Total: 15
Season Total: 845
15.4 PnM2 (Round 3)E1 - title contains name of person, Scarpetta (MC's last name)
Scarpetta (Kay Scarpetta #16) by Patricia Cornwell
+15 Task
Post Total: 15
Season Total: 860
Post 409 June wrote: "10.6- WW II# 150 on fiction list
The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
Task: 10
Combo- 15 (10.7- AEUI, 10,10, 20.5)
pages: 5 - 532
Post total: 30
Season total: 150"
Good catch on seeing this has moved up the list!
15.9 E2. Title contains a number: 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World by Elif Shafak
+30 Task (Title contains a number:)
Task Total: 30
Season Total: 620
10.1 Sub-SandwichGwendy's Button Box by Stephen King
+10 Task
+ 5 Combo: 20.4 Boomer
Task Total: 15
Season Total: 635
10.2 Book Lover's DayThe Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson
+10 Task
+10 Combo: 10.7 A, E, I, O, U, sometimes Y / 10.8 Double O
Task Total: 20
Season Total: 655
10.5 BannedLysistrata by Aristophanes
+10 Task
+ 5 Combo: 10.7 A, E, I, O, U, sometimes Y
+10 Not a Novel
+25 Oldies
Task Total: 50
Season Total: 705
10.7 A, E, I, O, U, sometimes Y (Anika's Task)The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham
+10 Task
+ 5 Combo: 10.10 Group Reads
+10 Oldies
Task Total: 25
Season Total: 730
20.2 Wolf HallThe Duchess of Malfi by John Webster
+20 Task
+10 Not a Novel
+25 Oldies (1614)
Task Total: 55
Season Total: 785
20.4 BoomerThere's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do: Poems, 1963-1978 by Michael Ondaatje
+20 Task
+10 Combo: 10.7 A, E, I, O, U, sometimes Y / 20.8 Periodic Table (MO= Molybdenum)
+10 Not a Novel
+ 5 Oldies
Task Total: 45
Season Total: 830
Goof: -5
Season Total: 825
15.9 PnM2E6 Title contains a Q, X, or Z
Xeni by Rebekah Weatherspoon
+30 Task
Post Total: 30
Season Total: 370
20.5 Non-LinearBecause Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch
The age of the internet is the age of widespread informal writing. Before, the informal writing we engaged in (and that linguists could study) was limited in scope and publicness: postcards, notes passed during class, post-its and other memos, grocery lists, yearbook inscriptions, and the like. And while the ubiquity of informal writing does not, has not, and will not eliminate formal writing--essays, articles, etc.--we're now also engaged in a whole lot more informal writing on a regular basis, and a lot more public-facing informal writing. In this account of the history of how we communicate online, McCulloch covers a lot of ground to illustrate the social nature of language and the fun we humans have always had with it, even before the internet.
It was a delight to read nonfiction that was personally relevant to me but also not depressing as all heck. McCulloch states early on that her intention was to look at language not from the perspective of dismissive sky-is-falling hand-wringing over how people communicate. She writes, "Whatever else is changing for good or for bad in the world, the continued evolution of language is neither the solution to all our problems nor the cause of them. It simply is. You never truly step into the same English twice. When future historians look back on this era, they'll find our changes just as fascinating as we now find innovative words from Shakespeare or Latin or Norman French. So let's adopt the perspective of these future historians now, and explore the revolutionary period in linguistic history that we're living through from a place of excitement and curiosity." She commits to this approach, and the curiosity and interest made this book a joy to read.
My family got AOL in 1994, so I've spent the vast majority of my life with the internet as a daily presence, and I could identify where I fit in the waves and cohorts that McCulloch classifies. Beyond seeing where I fit in with the historical record, it was also interesting to learn about what sort of language play I engage in intuitively without really being able to articulate the intricacies of it. Why, yes, I do use extra exclamation points !! and question marks ?? when I want to emphasize my sincerity and enthusiasm. And the irony tilde! I use it plenty without having thought too deeply about why~. Now I know what I mean by it, and that it has origins in the ~*~sparkle~*~ enthusiasm tilde, and I know the evolution of that is a common process for a lot of language we engage in, and how this all fits in the centuries of English language history searching for irony markers in text.
A historical note I was excited to learn: while I knew about the origin of the word meme, and the origin of Godwin's Law, I hadn't realized that Godwin's Law was the first specified internet meme, and Mike Godwin actually coined it as a "counter-meme" to address what he understood as a meme of comparing everything to Hitler. (And given that this book is published in 2019 amid an ongoing upsurge of Everything, McCulloch does include Godwin's recent clarification to "[b]y all means, compare these shitheads to Nazis.")
Other notes: McCulloch does touch open topics like digital blackface, the mainstream adoption of "on fleek" and the long history of mainstream pop culture originating in American Black culture, and she cites Black writers on the topic. She also draws upon studies based on non-English languages. Also, I've been a fan of McCulloch since her first post on The Toast, explaining a phenomenon I couldn't parse out myself. (Listen, I don't think it's a healthy or kind practice to make fun of anyone's name, and I live my life by the general principle of ignoring Benedict Cumberbatch's existence. But I wanted to understand why when someone refers contextless to Bentobox Lumberjack, I instantly know who they mean.)
+20 Task -- subjects in the history of informal language aren't covered chronologically; for example, the history of emojis is covered before the history of telephone greetings
+10 Not-a-Novel
+10 Review
Post Total: 40
Season Total: 410
Post 424 Karen Michele wrote: "20.4 BoomerThere's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do: Poems, 1963-1978 by Michael Ondaatje
+20 Task
+10 Combo: 10.7 A, E, I, O, U, sometimes Y / 20.8 Periodic Ta..."
Ondaatje was born in 1943, so before the Boomer generation. We'll score this for 20.8, so just a loss of the 5 point combo. Let us know if you want differently.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Post 424 Karen Michele wrote: "20.4 BoomerThere's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning to Do: Poems, 1963-1978 by Michael Ondaatje
+20 Task
+10 Combo: 10.7 A, E, I, O, U,..."
Changing it to 20.8 is fine --- thanks!
20.4 BoomerA Model World and Other Stories by Michael Chabon
This is a collection of eleven short stories, nine of which were first published in The New Yorker, and as one would expect they are very well written. The first group did not have a unifying theme. Plots include a bride who has a meltdown at her wedding, a college student who plagiarizes an entire book and submits it as his doctoral dissertation, and a squabbling unmarried couple who sell off one another's valuable possessions and end up in a lawsuit. These stories were okay, but it was the second group that I really loved.
This group consists of five interconnected stories following the main character Nathan Shapiro. It begins with the summer of the breakup of ten-year-old Nathan's parents. Each succeeding story is set a few years later until Nathan has reached late adolescence. If all the stories had been about Nathan, this would have easily been a five-star collection for me. Overall, 4 stars easily.
+20 task (born 1963)
+10 combo {10.7, 20.8-MC-moscovium)
+10 not-a-novel
+10 review
+ 5 oldies (1991)
Task total=55
Grand total=555
10.10 Group ReadThe Alice Networkby Kate Quinn
Review
I wanted to read this book for awhile. You don't hear much about women in World War II, at least fighting for the cause. I think these women were brave to serve their country. They were able to thwart many of the Nazis plans. I think the author researched the book well and brought a new insight into this part of history.
I had studied World War II and had no idea about this secret organization of women. I liked how the women came from different lifestyles and their personalities worked well together.
Task +10
Combo +15 10.6 World War II, 10.7, 20.5 Nonlinear
Review +10
Jumbo +5 532pp
Grand Total: 90
10.9 Science! (Mary's Task)(Set almost exclusively in Cameroon)
A Zoo in My Luggage by Gerald Durrell
I've watched a few of the PBS episodes of The Durrells and enjoyed them. And I have worked my way through the first half of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet without the same level of enjoyment. So, I had some familiarity with the Durrell family before picking up this first book (for me) by the animal-loving Gerald Durrell.
In this book, Gerald describes his adventures in...at that time, the British Cameroons...now Cameroon. He travels with his wife with the intention of aggregating a collection of animals that he can bring back to England to start a zoo. Along the way the reader learns about some animals he or she has never heard of before. We get a primer on 1950s wildlife photography. We re-visit a Cameroon chieftain, the Fon, who seems to always be happy and ready to have a party with his guests...and who is equally fascinated with the animals Durrell is collecting. The Fon had never seen a live chimpanzee. A light but enjoyable read that exhibits Durrell's love and care of animals. 3 stars.
Task=10
Combo= 5 (10.8
Review=10
Oldie=5 (1962)
NaN=10
Task Total= 40
Grand Total=745
Tasks Completed: 24
10.1 (40); 10.3 (35); 10.4 (35); 10.5 (30); 10.6 (30); 10.7 (35); 10.8 (35); 10.9 (40)
15.1(E3)(15); 15.2(B2)(15); 15.3(F6)(15); 15.4(D4)(15); 15.5(F2)(20); 15.6(C4)(20); 15.7(D6)(20); 15.8 (E5)(20)
20.1 (35); 20.2 (65); 20.3 (35); 20.4 (50); 20.5 (40); 20.7 (35); 20.8 (45); 20.9 (40)
20.7 Spec FicRogue Protocol by Martha Wells
+20 Task
+5 Combo (20.4 born 1964)
Task Total: 25
Season Total: 635
20.4 BoomerNecessary as Blood by Deborah Crombie
Our library system has the latest Deborah Crombie book featured on its website. I had never heard of her or the Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James mystery series, but when I opened the book preview and saw a map and read her writing, I became interested. The new book is not yet in the library, but this book (#13 in 18-book series) was available.
I am glad I was able to read it in a weekend; there were so many characters that putting it aside would have meant having to go back and re-read, probably.
Story is set in London's East End, a Bangladeshi section. The mystery is that a young mother, a fabric collage artist, disappears just before meeting her husband that afternoon. He (Pakistani lawyer) is later found dead. The detectives, Gemma and Duncan, work together and are engaged to be married; each has a child from a previous marriage. I don't often read mysteries, but this one was a page-turner; might read another one in the series.
+20 Task (b. 1952)
+10 Combo 10.7 (a,e,i,o), 10.8 (blood)
+10 Review
Task Total: 40
Season Total: 125
20.3 AuthorWhere the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
+20 Task
+ 20 Combo (10.1, 10.7, 20.4, 20.5)
Task total = 40
Task Total: 40
Season Total: 180
15.1 - Pick 'n Mix 2A1 - Setting - USA
Cold Betrayal by J.A. Jance
+15 task
Task total: 15
Grand total: 105
15.2 - Pick 'n Mix 2A6 - Setting - Australia
Truly Madly Guiltyby Liane Moriarty
+15 task
Task total: 15
Grand total: 120
15.3 - Pick 'n Mix 2B1 - Publication date - 2001-2019
The Hunt Clubby John Lescroart
+15 task (2006)
Task total: 15
Grand total: 135
15.4 - Pick 'n Mix 2B2 - Publication date - 1951-2000
Bloody Kin by Margaret Maron
15 task (1985)
Task total: 15
Grand total: 150
15.5 - Pick 'n Mix 2C3 - Narrator - First Person
The Girl on the Trainby Paula Hawkins
+20 task
Task total: 20
Grand total: 170
15.6 - Pick 'n Mix 2C5 - Narrator - Popular Unreliable
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
+20 task
Task total: 20
Grand total: 190
15.5 PnM2 (Round 3)B6 - pub. 1771
The Man of Feeling by Henry MacKenzie
+20 Task
Post Total: 20
Season Total: 880
15.10 P'nM 2 Chance Developments: Unexpected Love Stories by Alexander McCall Smith
B1 - 2015
30 task
100 completion bonus
___
130
Running total: 735
20.4 BoomerPrisoner of Midnight by Barbara Hambly
+20 Task (born 1951)
+5 Combo (20.8 Bh=Bohrium)
Task Total: 25
Season Total: 660
20.1 Inaugural Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
This was a re-read for me.
What a beautiful book about the immigrant experience...about first love...about possible beginnings and possible endings...about living and loving and letting go.
I read 3/4 of this on my phone (Kindle app, while my husband was sleeping and I couldn't so I turned to this book on my phone) and 1/4 in an actual paper and paste book...I don't quite know how to explain it, but I definitely had a different experience in the different media. I felt far more connected to the paper-and-ink experience...when reading on the phone, I found my mind wandering and having to read pages over and over to understand what was going on. It made me a little sad, because I remember the first time reading this being an absolutely transformative experience.
I still love the writer's prose. I loved the direction of the story and the characters and the strange offshoots as if you were walking down the wrong hallway in a building with which you were unfamiliar. I wasn't as essentially shifted upon completion as I felt the first time. I still think it was a 5-star read--but I was more struck not so much by the story itself but more by the realization that reading on a Kindle (especially when it's the app on my phone) is not as fulfilling an experience as the written word on a page of pulp.
+20 Task (2017 nominee)
+10 Review
+10 Combo (20.5; 20.7--shelved as "speculative fiction" by 44 readers)
Task total: 40
Season total: 1005
15.6 PnM2 (Round 3)F2 - author's name begins with G
Beneath the Dark Ice (Alex Hunter #1) by Greig Beck
+20 Task
Post Total: 20
Season Total: 900
15.6 PnM2 Round 2 C6Messenger’s Legacy by Peter V. Brett
+20 Task (multiple POV narrators)
Task Total: 20
Season Total: 680
10.7 AEIOUYIslam by John Alden Williams
+10 task
+10 not a novel
+5 age (pub 1961)
Task total: 25
Grand total: 1430
From Post 193Anika wrote: "10.10 Group Reads
The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
I didn’t know a thing about this book before picking it up...that is one of my favorite things to do and I don’t..."
+5 Combo 10.6 (recently moved up on the list)
From Post 360Karen Michele wrote: "20.6 Monster Redux
The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories by Algernon Blackwood
+20 Task
+10 Oldies (1906)
Task Total: 30
Season Total: 570"
+10 Not a Novel
From Post 383Rebekah wrote: "20.3 Author
Drood by Dan Simmons
+20 -Task
+15 - Combo (10.8, 20.4- 1948 on Goodreads Page, 20.8 - Darmstadtium )
Task total - 35 pts
Season Total - 280 pts"
+10 Jumbo
Task 10.7 A, E, I, O, U, sometimes Y (Anika's Task)silvia mOrEno-garcIA
Gods of Jade and Shadow (2019) by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Review: This fast-paced fantasy novel is set in 1920s Mexico. Our heroine is a half-Mayan 18 year old ‘poor relation’ in a wealthy ‘Spanish’ family, named Casiopea Tun. (Entertainingly, the physical description of Casiopea matches the author photograph on the back cover of the book.) She is treated as a servant and is resentful as a result. One day, she opens a forbidden, locked chest and frees the spirit of the Mayan god of death, Hun-Kame. Through trickery, he was imprisoned in the chest. Now he needs Casiopea’s help to restore him to his position in the Mayan Underworld, Xibalba. The author assumes that her readers are unknowledgeable about the Mayan religions/myths, and so takes the time to do an excellent job of explaining that Mayan background. The events are internally consistent, the pacing is brisk, and the ending fits the novel. Recommended for readers of fantasy who are looking for something fantastical but completely different from the usual fantasy novel.
+10 Task
+10 Review
Task Total: 10 + 10 = 20
Grand Total: 305 + 20 = 325
10.8 Double "O"The Boy on the Wooden Box by Leon Leyson (1000 Lexile)
Several of the books I've read this season have gotten me thinking: how easily we ascribe labels to people, assuming their character and motivations (often assuming the worst) and how very wrong we often are. In this case, we are shown the Nazis in all of their horror--the wanton and purposeless killing, the cruelty of their crimes, their abject lack of humanity--yet the narrator is saved by a Nazi: Oskar Schindler.
The story of Leon's life is a difficult one to hear: the privations and humiliations that they experienced at the beginning of the war, the struggle for survival during the war, the loss of family members, the persecution they experienced from the Poles as they returned to their home. Yet in the epilogue, he expresses his gratitude and love for Schindler, a Nazi, and states of him: "One person can stand up to evil and make a difference." Leon and his family were nearly killed on many different occasions and Schindler stepped in just in time to rescue them...to the point that it would seem unbelievable if it were fiction.
While I was overwhelmed (as I always am) by the firsthand account of a survivor and they lengths they had to go to in order to live, I found myself struck most by the story of Schindler as it was intertwined with the author's. How easy it is for the "Haves" to ignore and disregard the "Have Nots"...yet this rich and influential German spent his entire fortune and put himself and his family at great risk to save the lives of 1,200 strangers...
I don't quite know what to say other than: what an amazing story.
+10 Task
+10 Review
+10 Not-a-Novel
Task total: 30
+100 RwS Finish
Season total: 1140
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Reading with Style
Books mentioned in this topic
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Mitchell Zuckoff (other topics)
Joseph Kesselring (other topics)
Mitchell Zuckoff (other topics)
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Citizen Vince by Jess Walter
Title contains a Q, X, or Z
Task total=15
Grand total=500
5 stars