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WI 20-21 Completed Tasks
10.6 NotableLess by Andrew Sean Greer
Arthur Less, a little-known novelist approaching his fiftieth birthday, decides to accept a long sequence of overseas invitations as a way of avoiding the wedding of his part-time lover to another man. We accompany him and his blue suit from California to New York, Mexico, Italy, Berlin, Paris, Morocco, India, and Japan.
This book has some great moments when you get into it. I think it has the best bits in the middle, like a sandwich.
Like many reviewers, I struggled to see whatever the Pulitzer judges saw in it. I did enjoy knowing that it had won a Pulitzer while I read the scene where one of the characters learns he has won a Pulitzer, but they surely wouldn't award the prize just to create that twist. I thought perhaps the judges look for work that captures a mood or trend prevailing in America in recent years? That might explain it.
+10 Task (on the 2017 list)
+ 5 Combo (10.5 main character and several other writers)
+10 Review
+ 5 Prizeworthy
Task total: 30
Season Total: 1300
20.5 AfricaHomegoing by Yaa Gyasi
I've started and erased this review three times so far, hopefully this one will take...it's just so hard to talk about a book that you loved, that left you feeling changed, was an illuminating read...I just don't quite know where to begin.
It felt like reading a collection of interconnected short stories, as each chapter follows a different character...a character of the next generation of a family line beginning with two half-sisters in Ghana in the eighteenth century, plaiting the two lines back and forth over years and oceans until they are tied together again at the end. It was beautifully written and impossible to put down. Easily five stars and hugely recommended.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+15 Combo 10.4, 10.6 (2016), 20.1
+15 Prizeworthy: PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award (2017), American Book Award (2017), Audie Award (2017)
Task total: 60
Season total: 1415
10.6 NotableThe Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen
I finished reading this one nearly a month ago and just realized that I never posted it :-/
And I now recall that I put off posting it because I enjoyed it so much and couldn't find the right words to narrow down *why* I liked it so much.
It's a gem of short stories, each facet reflecting the experience of a different Vietnamese family...some families still grappling with the aftermath of the war and the terror they suffered at the hands of the Communists, some (literally) haunted by lost family members, some grappling with life in a new country while others struggle in Vietnam and each thinks the other is so much better off...
Nguyen's writing is rich and lyrical. Often in short story collections, I feel like half are brilliant and half are fillers: this collection absolutely shone and there was only one story that was "meh" for me. This is the first work of this author that I've read, but it won't be the last.
+10 Task (2017)
+10 Review
+5 Combo 10.4
Task total: 25
Season total: 1440
20.10 Grand MasterA Good Marriage by Stephen King
Even if his typical subject matter isn't to your taste, we can all agree that Stephen King is a talented writer, yes? How could one not be, after so many years of honing one's craft?
I am a King fan, but only a recent King fan and one who has barely dipped their toe in his oeuvre. While I love the tension and fear that he can generate in his novels, the supernatural themes that tend to pop up are...um...distracting? irritating? a bit of a let down when the build-up is so terrifying and believable and what my dark heart really wants is a believably terrifying *human* villain.
I think that's why I prefer his novel/las which are firmly rooted in reality. Like this one. THIS was terrifying because it's a worst-nightmare scenario without having to resort to the supernatural. It is at times dismissive of women and has a brief dash of damaged children (two other themes I've noticed pop up in his works), but it's easy to stomach when the story itself is so riveting.
+20 Task (2007 recipient)
+10 Review
Task total: 30
Season total: 1470
20.3 Post modernWild Ducks Flying Backward by Tom Robbins
I love Tom Robbins. Which maybe explains a lot, but in this case, it certainly explains why I bought this book. I bought it way, way back when we could do crazy things like have (and attend) a library book sale. Seems so long ago….. those were good times, eh.
This is a collection of various short writings of Tom Robbins. They range from magazine columns, to poetry, to script or story treatments, and other random short items. As with any collection, some are good and some are ‘meh’. I found the first few in the book (some magazine columns) heavy going because they were so dated. That was disappointing. I enjoyed other pieces much more, they showed his wit and incomparable turn of phrase. Overall, I would say this is a good collection for a fan or a completist; otherwise I would advise sticking to his novels. 3.5*
20 task
10 review
____
30
Running total: 1175
15.1 Name of the Game, Round 3Even This Page Is White by Vivek Shraya
7C--Letter G--Goodreads author
8D--Letter E--Wild card!
10B--Letter T--Published in the teens (2016)
Word: GET
+15 Task
+5 Not fiction (poetry)
Task total: 20
Season total: 1490
15.2 Name of the Game, Round 3An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten
10C--Letter T--MPG Thriller
11C--Letter H--One of author's names begins with "H"
14D--Letter Y--MPG Mystery
Word: THY
+15 Task
+5 Not fiction (short stories)
Task total: 20
Season total: 1510
15.3 Name of the Game, Round 3Dearly: New Poems by Margaret Atwood
5D--Letter I--No "i" in author's name
8E--Letter W--Winner Goodreads Choice (2020, Poetry)
12B--Letter S--75-199 page count (124 pages)
13B--Letter T--Author born in '30s (1939)
Word: WITS
+15 Task
+5 Not fiction (poetry)
Task total: 20
Season total: 1530
15.4 Name of the Game, Round 3Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman by Peter Korn
6E--Letter N--New to you author
7B--Letter G--No "g" in author's name
8C--Letter W--Title contains "who," "what," "when," "where," or "why"
9C--Letter I--Character is an instructor
Word: WING
+15 Task
+5 Not fiction (philosophy/biography)
Task total: 20
Season total: 1550
15.5 Name of the Game, Round 3The Torrents of Spring by Ivan Turgenev
1C--Letter R--MPG Romance
3E--Letter A--Pub'd 1866-1913 (1872)
10D--Letter T--Translated (from Russian)
16E--Letter E--Novel has +8 named characters
Word: TEAR
+20 Task
+5 Pub'd pre-'96
Task total: 25
Season total: 1575
15.6 Name of the Game, Round 3Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter
1B--Letter R--+10K Ratings (+27K)
4B--Letter D--Debut novel (noted in author GR bio)
9B--Letter I--Set on an island (UK)
11E--Letter H--Highly rated (5-star ratings from Bucket, Madly Jane, and more)
16B--Letter E--Author born in Europe (UK)
Word: HIRED
+20 Task
Task total: 20
Season total: 1595
15.7 Name of the Game, Round 3Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan
2C--Letter E--"Ex" word in title
11D--Letter H--Hot off the presses (pub'd 2020)
15D--Letter L--Author's last/most recent book
15E--Letter L--MPG LGBT
Word: HELL
+20 Task
Task total: 20
Season total: 1605
15.8 Name of the Game, Round 3The Legacy by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir
1E--Letter R--Series name contains an "r" (Children's House)
3C--Letter A--Author has August birthday (24 Aug 1963)
6C--Letter N--MPG Nordic Noir
13C--Letter T--Title: The (Plus)
Word: RANT
+30 Task
Task total: 30
Season total: 1635
Task 10.6 NotableRead a book from the NYT Notable Books from 2010-2019.
Year: 2016
The Fortunes (2016) by Peter Ho Davies (Hardcover, 268 pages)
+10 Task
Task Total: 10
Grand Total: 345 + 10 = 355
15.9 Name of the Game, Round 3Love Voltaire Us Apart: A Philosopher's Guide to Relationships by Julia Edelman
2B—Letter E—2 or more “e”s in author’s name
2D—Letter E—8+ word title
6B—Letter N—Not a novel
10E—Letter T—No “the” in title
13E—Letter T—Title includes name of character
Word: TENET
+30 Task
+5 Not Fiction
Task total: 35
Season total: 1670
10.2 ChristmasHarry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
I wouldn't normally read these fantasy books, but having it on hand and having read the first one in the series, I relented. I doubt that there are many people who are not somehow familiar with the Harry Potter series....and I know that even in my own circle of friends, the franchise has many fervent admirers. I am not in agreement. I will say that I didn't hate reading it, but it is childish.....and of course the books are intended to be read by children. But, even as a child, I was not drawn to such cartoonish fantasies.
I found myself constantly questioning elements...such as, why is Harry the only character with a "cloak of invisibility"? Why don't other characters constantly use the charm that causes others to lose their memories? Why do the school officials, with all their powers, not know when students have left the premises? So.....the reader must suspend a lot of these questions and just accept the facts as presented.
I'm giving three stars because I'm feeling generous and because I have recently read some other works of supposed literature which were not as well constructed as a narrative.
Task=10
combo= 10 ( 10.3; 10.4)
Review=10
Prizes=15
Task Total=45
Grand Total= 815
10.1; 10.2; 10.3 (2x); 10.4; 10.5; 10.6; .....; 10.8; 10.9;10.10
15.1; 15.2, 15.3, 15.4, 15.5; 15.6; 15.7
20.1; 20.2; 20.3; .....; 20.5; 20.6; 20.7; 20.8; 20.9; 20.10
15.8 Name of the GameThe Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
Square 12B - Letter S - Page Count 75-199 (184)
Square 3E - Letter A - Book published between 1865-1914 (1890)
Square 9B - Letter I - Set on an Island (UK)
Square 6D - Letter N - Title has a number (Four)
Word: SAIN (to make the sign of the cross)
+30 task
+5 published pre 1996
Post Total: 35
Season Total: 620
15.9 Name of the GameThe Unwilling by Kelly Braffet
Square 15D - Letter L - Author’s most recent book
Square 5D - Letter I - Author name has no “I”
Square 13C - Letter T - The plus one word title
Word: LIT
+30 Task
Post Total: 30
Season Total: 650
15.10 Name of the GameA Study in Brimstone by G.S. Denning
Square 5C - Letter I - Title Word In, Inn, Into
Square 1D - Letter R - A retelling (a study in scarlet)
Square 5E - Letter I - Author publishes with more than 1 initial
Square 8D - Letter S - Wild Card!
Word: IRIS
+45 Task
+100 Completion
+100 3 or more 4 letter words (IRIS, SAIN, GRIT, SEND)
Post Total: 245
Season Total: 895
10.4 - ValentineThe Stranger by Camilla Lackberg
+10 task
+10 - translated
Task total: 20
Grand total: 665
10.4 - ValentineThe Silkworm by Robert Galbraith
+10 task
+5 Prizeworthy - Audie Award for Mystery 2015
Task total: 15
Grand total: 720
10.4 ValentineBride of the Sea by Eman Quotah
Newlyweds Muneer and Saeedah came to America on student visas. The mismatched young couple from Saudi Arabia were soon expecting their first child, but Muneer already was thinking about divorcing his volatile wife. Muneer returned to Saudi Arabia while their daughter, Hanadi, stayed with his ex-wife in Ohio. Tormented by the fear that Muneer would eventually separate her from their daughter, Saeedah assumed a new name and disappeared with Hanadi. They moved frequently--constantly switching identities, changing schools, never getting close to people, and living a life of lies.
Muneer finally found his daughter when she was seventeen, and introduced her to a loving extended family in Jidda. (The city of Jidda is called the "Bride of the Red Sea.") This is a story of two cultures where Hanadi feels a sense of loss for what she missed and wonders where she belongs. She also loves the greater freedom for women, and educational opportunities in America. The book shows us a broken family over a fifty year period. Details of American and Saudi history, religion, food, and traditions are woven into the story. Author Eman Quotah grew up in both Saudi Arabia and the United States so she is able to sensitively portray Hanadi caught between cultures.
+10 task
+ 5 combo 10.8 Lunar (pub 2021)
+10 review
Task total: 25
Season total: 500
20.4 Science The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee
+20 Task
+5 Combo 10.6
+5 Jumbo 592 pages
Task total = 30
Season Total: 1140
20.7 Lifetime Letters of Two Brides by Honoré de Balzac
+20 Task published 1842
+10 Lost in Translation
Task total = 30
Season Total: 1170
20.3 Post ModernNaked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
Review
I have to admit to being completely ignorant on this point. I only finished the book so I can tick off a reading challenge task. I know that I cannot fully understand drug addiction and everything that comes with that plus the struggle against it but I also cannot relate to any part of this story. Not only did I find them un-relatable but also very crude. The book description I read on Goodreads makes sense to me but I struggled to find those in what I read of the book. This obviously was beyond my level of comprehension and therefore, it is not for me.
+20 Task
+10 Review
Post Total: 30
Season Total: 1,955
20.4 ScienceAlan Turing: Unlocking the Enigma by David Boyle
I had a general knowledge of Alan Turing....that he had been instrumental in breaking German codes during WWII....and that he was persecuted for being gay. But this thin book educated me on how much of an innovator he truly was. I did not know (or at least, I did not remember) that he conceived the idea of modern computers. First he was inspired by the cards that were used for weaving in British mills. Then he realized, to be effective, computers would need to be digital. As usual with important scientists, his insights were not readily accepted by other scientists at the time. Turing also was the first person to really think about artificial intelligence and its significance and limits (if any?). The author disabused me (and probably many others) of the general idea that Turing was autistic or somewhere on the spectrum. I also learned that the Apple logo may have been inspired by Turing's method of suicide- a poisoned apple.
A concise read...perfect for the layman such as myself. Four stars.
Task=20
combo= 5 ( 10.3)
Review=10
Task Total=35
Grand Total= 850
10.1; 10.2; 10.3 (2x); 10.4; 10.5; 10.6; .....; 10.8; 10.9;10.10
15.1; 15.2, 15.3, 15.4, 15.5; 15.6; 15.7
20.1; 20.2; 20.3; 20.4; 20.5; 20.6; 20.7; 20.8; 20.9; 20.10
10.8 LunarRemote Control by Nnedi Okorafor
4 stars
This novella was a delight. This is the story of a young girl who is in love with the stars who gains a strange and deadly power with serious consequences. I can’t really say more than that without giving it away since it is only a novella and each beat of the story is so important to enjoying this book. I have read one other of Okorafor’s novellas (Binti) and I enjoy the really unique voice that she gives her characters. I loved Binti and I love Sankofa/Fatima who is the main character in this story even more. I love the afrofuturism which is so different from other forms of futurism/speculative fiction. Even though the main character is a young girl this is not a story for kids and it has some very difficult content and graphic depiction of death. My favorite thing about this story was the end, but I can’t give it five stars because it absolutely could have been a full length novel. There were elements of the story that I really wanted to spend more time with and see more fully developed. Overall I would highly recommend this to people who enjoy near future speculative fiction and don’t mind some violence and death.
+10 Task (published 2021)
+10 Review
+5 Combo (10.4 CHERUBS)
Task Total: 25
Season Total: 920
10.7 El NinaOphelia and the Marvelous Boy by Karen Foxlee
(no combo, middle grade)
The main character must free the Marvelous Boy so he can defeat the Snow Queen and release the city from eternal winter.
+10 task
Task Total: 10
Season Total: 930
20.6 CaribbeanThe White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey
+20 Task (set 100% in Trinidad)
+ 5 Combo (10.8 2009)
Task total: 25
Season Total: 1325
10.8 LunarTemporary Kings by Anthony Powell
The action in this penultimate volume of A Dance to the Music of Time takes place mainly at two events – a literary conference in Venice which coincides with the Biennale and film festival, and a recital in the home of Rosie and Odo Stevens. As always, characters reappear in surprising new relationships. Widmerpool gets himself out of another sticky situation, while his wife becomes embroiled in more dark and dangerous situations.
Coming towards the end of the series, I am starting to think I’d like to read them all again, knowing everyone’s fates from the beginning. But that would be a mammoth task!
+10 Task (1973)
+10 Review
+ 5 Combo (10.5 main character is an author)
Task total: 25
Season Total: 1350
20.8 TravelThe Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom by Slavomir Rawicz
Review
An officer in the Polish Army, Slavomir Rawicz, served his country during the Soviet-German invasion prior to WW II, when Hitler and Stalin were still allies narrates this ghost-written tale full of grit, hunger, torture, braving the elements, resilience, determination, courage, and brotherhood. After the invasion, he and several other former military soldiers were arrested on trumped up charges of espionage, treason, sabotage and any other crimes with the usually torture for confessions, months of prison without knowing the charges, the kangaroo court trial in secret, which ultimately led to his receiving a sentence of 25 years of hard labor in Siberia at the age of 25. This is but the background for the real story is about his escape along with 6 others, including 1 American, from the gulag. They leave in a February snowstorm to cover their tracks. They travel across Siberia, where they find a young girl also trying to escape a Siberian work camp. The journey takes them through Mongolia, across the Gobi Desert, into Tibet, over the Himalayas, eventually finding rescue in Northern India still under the British Raj in 1942. Of the 8 sojourners, only 4 make it to India, which based the on extreme hardships they endured is remarkable.
This isn’t in the book but is interesting. In 2006 BBC released a program contesting the validity of the Rawicz’s adventure. Soviet records showed he had been released in an exchange program. Another man came forward to say it was all true, but it had happened to him and not to Rawicz. Polish Army records left the USSR for Iran and do show him in Palestine and yet another account by a British Intelligence Officer states that there were 3 men that claimed to have come from Siberia in near death condition. Whichever is true it is gripping story as all Odysessyesque tales are.
Of note is a side topic of seeing creatures 8 feet tall, bipedal and covered in hair in the Himalayas that they observed and decided to avoid. He never found out what they were but afterwards read accounts of Abominable Snowmen and wondered if that is what they had seen. It’s amazing that this incident didn’t demand further investigation and cause more uproar.
+20 pts - Task
+10 pts - Review
+10 pts - Lost in Translation - Polish
Task Total - 40 pts
I'm with Ed, Covid causes cabin fever!
20.5 AfricaHomegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Review
This saga begins in the early days of the African international slave trade with Europe and later with the Americas. We follow the descendants of the Fire Woman and her tow daughters and the weaving of their stories with various aspects of interaction with the whites. The involvement and cooperation of the Ashanti of Ghana in the slave trade, their partnership with the foreign slave traders is seemingly the curse that his put on these people. From a marriage between an Ashanti girl to a British official who runs the acquisition and export side of the slave trade where she lives a strange existence in comfort in a society that sells people like herself to the inter-tribal wars and inter-tribal marriages we get an historical sense of Africans own customs of slavery, which the Europeans exploited even further. As we are given the story of succeeding generations and the changes occurring in Ghana through the decades and centuries, there is a parallel line of the slaves that were sold to planters in America and the changes and their descendants experienced all the way to the days of Harlem and Jim Crow.
Undoubtably this is a classic and a very savory read that carries us through much in the style of Roots but with the African perspective included.
+20 pts- Task
+10 pts - Review
+15 pts - Combo (10.4, 10.6-for 2016, 20.1 - #111)
+15 pts - Prizeworthy (PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award, American Book Award, Alabama Author Award and many more)
Task Total - 60 pts
20.4 ScienceNeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman
Review
Silberman gives a microhistory of this condition that seems to be exploding in the newer generations, causing some to describe the increase in diagnosis an epidemic. One of Silberman’s questions is ‘is this really an epidemic? Or have we learned to see identify it, take it out of the hidden attic, and learned about their being many types now known as the spectrum?’ As we look back, it is much more obvious that some of our eccentric characters in history most likely were Autistic including some of the greatest scientist from the 17th and 18th centuries. With the advent of public schools, this phenomenon became more noticeable among groups of children all expected to pass certain milestones at the same age and to behave academically, socially, emotionally and mentally within these norms. Regrettably, children with Autism were given bleak prognosis by the doctors early on as being so mentally deficient they could never learn to read or even communicate or it was suggested as a type of schizophrenia, consigning these children to mental institutions for the duration of their lives. There were leading psychiatrists who felt the children needed negative feedback to ‘correct’ them using cruel and outrageous methods including electric shock to force children to be loving and demonstrative! Then there was the refusal of certain advocate groups to accept the adults who had missed diagnosis as children and therefore were not allowed the resources that became available for autistic children. The release of the movie Rainman starring Dustin Hoffman seems to be a turning point in our collective understanding of the disorder. Silberman champions the idea that Autism may not in essence be a disorder in itself but part of the neurodiversity of individuals as he includes in the books subtitle. Because in the past history has been blind to the gifts that these people have, we have lost some fine minds in our quest for uniformity.
+20 pts- Task
+10 pts - Review
+ 5 pts - Combo (10.6 for 2015)
+10 pts - Prizeworthy ( Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction, Openbook)
Task Total- 45 pts
20.3 Post ModernFoucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
Review
Umberto Eco’s novels are comparable to Dan Brown’s novels with a doctorate degree and on steroids. Einstein should have enjoyed them. They are enjoyable but I find myself having to take breaks to absorb what is going on. The story line is very intriguing, and I was able to limp along with it. A strange man brings an independent publisher of esoteric works a scrap of document found in Egypt that bears the markings of an ancient list that could be related to rites of the Knights Templar. A group of scholars of ancient cults and magical societies commence research and a bit tongue-in-cheek arrive at their own “program” of a magical power. Everything seems to validate the document from texts on the Rosicrucians to the Bible and everything in between. This secret society is still viable but hidden. It gets crazy with the man with the scrap mysteriously disappears. Then the scholars who created the program start to fall apart whether from dying of a slow cancer to becoming mentally unbalanced to losing financially. The book culminates in a Satanic type of ritual, people die, and the narrator goes into hiding, perhaps never to see his family again. This is one of the few times I really want to see the movie because I really need the visual aid to grasp
it.
+20 pts- Task
+10 pts - Review
+15 pts - Prizeworthy (PEN Translation Prize, Premio Bancarella, Art Translationis)
+ 5 pts - Combo (10.5 - Narrator is author of scholarly book)
+10 pts - Lost in Translation - Italian
+ 5 pts - Jumbo (623 pages)
Task total - 65 pts
From Post 731Deedee wrote: "Task 20.5 Africa
In honor of Chinua Achebe, read one of the top 225 books from the list Africa (fiction and nonfiction).
On February 07, 2021: #58
Homegoing (2016) by [author:Yaa G..."
+15 Prize
+5 Combo 10.4
From Post 733Sarah wrote: "20.5 Africa (#81 on the list)
We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
+20 Task
+10 Awards (Betty Trask Award. Hemingway Foundation Award)
Post Total: +30
Season T..."
+5 Combo 10.6
From Post 743Valerie wrote: "10.3 Winter
The Cheltenham Square Murder by John Bude
This is the second Bude I’ve read. It is the third in the ‘Superintendent William Meredith’ series (of which..."
+5 Combo 10.8
From Post 749Joanna wrote: "10.9 The Fifth Season
The Broken Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
I'm enjoying this trilogy, though not quite as much as the author's Broken Earth trilogy. If you've alrea..."
+5 Combo 10.4
20.1 Black History MonthBlack Boy by Richard Wright
Review
It is hard to believe that in America’s early prosperity of the late 1900’s to the roaring twenties, so many children grew up in gut grinding poverty and hunger and if that child was black, the poverty and injustices and violences were multiplied. This memoir of Richard Wright’s childhood and early manhood in America’s deep South. In a community filled with harsh punishment and violence which was often arbitrary without known cause, in oppressive religious fanaticism, a disappearing father a seriously ill mother, Richard and his brother are often left to fend for themselves, always hungry. It is the written word and books that saves him. Even that was a struggle as the family is very suspicious of novels seen as of the devil and reading considered a waste of time, detrimental to the family’s survival. Having only completed one full year in a single school throughout his nine years of education, he was constantly pushing himself to “catch up”. Even the institution of education itself held little reward. Seeking to continue school past the ability to read and write and do basic arithmetic was deemed foolish and not worth time and money. In the schools he was never encouraged as everyone knew he would only be a manual laborer as that’s all “niggers could do”.
Yet he did have the gift of a mother’s love however weak and dependent she might be and as awful as it is to read some of the experiences no child should been subjected to, it is offset by his poetical thoughts and descriptions. As in “There was the love I had for the mute regality of tall, moss-clad oaks” or “There was the suspense I felt when I heard the taut, sharp song of a yellow-black bee hovering nervously but patiently above a white rose.” One of the most poignant of these phrases is “There was the yearning of identification loosed in me by the sight of a solitary ant carrying a burden upon a mysterious journey.”
+20 pts - Task
+10 pts - Review
+10 pts - Combo (10.4, 20.3)
Task Total - 40 pts
10.8 LunarThe Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly (Lexile 830)
This book was an absolute delight. It's a little bit Anne of Green Gables, a little The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a dash of Dickens and a fair amount of Darwin (every chapter begins with a passage from On the Origin of Species as a hint as to that chapter's adventure).
Calpurnia, the middle child of seven and the only girl, is eleven years old in 1899. She lives on a thriving farm in West Texas with her parents, brothers, and a grandfather whom has always slightly frightened her. He's always working in his "laboratory" behind the house, traipsing off to the local river and surroundings to find "specimens." One day, Calpurnia notices that there are two different types of grasshopper in the fields, green and yellow, and that the yellow ones are much larger than the green. She gathers up all of her courage to ask her grandfather why only the yellow ones get big and it is the beginning to a beautiful friendship between the two, all based on their love of the natural world and their desire to explore that world through the lens of science. It was well-written and, even though it's a book for younger readers, appeals to all ages--it reminds you that there is still such magic in the world if only you look closely.
+10 Task (pub. 2009)
+10 Review
+15 Combo: 10.3, 10.4, 20.4
+15 Prizeworthy: Josette Frank Award (2010), Audie Award (2011), Judy Lopez Memorial Award (2010) and more
Task total: 50
Season total: 1720
20.3 Post ModernThe Tent by Margaret Atwood
This woman has such a way with words. I read her most recent collection of poetry which pierced me right through the heart. The slim volume only whetted my appetite for Atwood so decided to pick up this collection.
It was a bit uneven...some of the stories left me scratching my head, think I missed the point entirely. But the stories and poems that hit, hit hard. Her poem, "Bring Back Mom: An Invocation," is still stuck in my brain. There's tongue-in-cheek/bleak, there's hopeless and hopeful and pretty much everything in between...
While I wouldn't recommend this volume to a new-to-Atwood reader, I would definitely tell anyone who is an Atwood lover who has missed this one to pick it up.
+20 Task
+10 Review
Task total: 30
Season total: 1750
10.8 Lunar Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
(1961)
Review
This book makes me disgusted. Why? Because of the discrimination the author so clearly exposed as he stepped into the skin of a black person in the Jim Crow South before the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960’s? Yes, partially. That would be disgust and shame but what makes me disgusted and angry is this book was published 16 years after another book written about the years of roughly 1912 – 1929 that had a lot of the same evil practices, yet not one thing had changed. The cherry on top is that in our current times, we are still dealing with a lot of the same issues. That overt racism is acceptable again, that the covert racism never left and that so many believe it is the right of European- Americans to be in charge by Divine Providence and white Christians (I can criticize, I was raised the daughter of a Southern Baptist preacher in the South),can sit in their churches and be pleased with themselves because it is not their fault God made another race inferior or given they are not naturally inferior, they have made their own problems. I remember in the 60’s when I was first learning to read that this book had been on my parents’ bookshelves as part of their college reading. I think it still should be required reading.
Before one can judge another, walk a mile in his shoes as John Howard Griffin did. In fact, we could walk in a lot of peoples’ shoes, Central American immigrants and Syrian and Palestinian Refugees for example as well as the homeless whose illustrious pedigrees can be traced back to the American Revolution.
Enough said!
+10 pts - Task
+10 pts - Review
+15 pts - Combo (10.3, 10.4,20.1)
+ 5 pts - Prizeworthy (Anisfield-Wolf Book Award)
Task Total - is 40 pts
20.5 Africa Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
Review:
4.0/5.0 - This books started out as a 5.0 for the first half, the middle really dragged, the ending was good, so a 4 star all in all. This was a book that I had to stop and take notes on throughout. I am ashamed to say I knew nothing about apartheid before reading this, and just have the most basic understanding now. One way to describe it is institutionalized racism within a police state, where blacks are forced to live in ghettos, and language is used as a barrier. By that I mean, each tribe (Zula, Xhosa, and many others) are forced to speak only their dialect, in essence creating a Tower of Babel situation. In South Africa during Trevor's childhood, there were 3 or 4 races. There were blacks, whites, colored and mixed. I'm not sure of the distinction between the last two, though. Colored was when a black man or woman had a child with white man or woman. That was Trevor's case, his father was German/Swiss, his mother South African. But he calls himself colored as opposed to mixed.
Trevor's mother was a strong, religious woman who raised him "as a white kid" (p.73), which is to say to believe in and speak up for himself, and to know that his ideas, thoughts and decisions mattered. She drummed into him from the time he was a small boy how to treat women with respect.
A couple of notes of things that stayed with me. Page 110 - "Being chosen is the greatest gift you can give another human being." (Trevor speaking of meeting back up with his father when he is a young man).
There were a couple of places in this book that reminded me of other books I have recently read. For example, in the chapter "The Mulberry Tree," he talks about how races can be promoted or demoted - an Indian might be considered colored, a colored person could be "promoted" to white, depending on the whim of the government official. I kept thinking about the chapter in Hawaii where the Japanese unit is training in the United States during World War II, and in some ways they are treated as negroes, and in other ways as whites. Parable of the Sower also came to mind, when he described neighborhoods in Johannesburg where "virtually every house sits behind a six-foot wall, with electric wire on top (p. 151)."
I found his statement that Germany teaches about the holocaust and England teaches about colonialism apologetically, but South Africa teaches about apartheid the same way America teaches about racism - it happened, get over it.
This is a book that made we think and weep and I hope taught me something. One thing that I did not understand at all, though, is its classification as humor, and the fact that it won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. I didn't find anything humorous about this book.
Task: 20
Review: 10
Combo: Combo - 10.4 & 10.6 [2017] - 10
Prizeworthy - 10 NAACP Image Award for Debut Author and for Biography / Auto-biography (2017), Thurber Prize for American Humor (2017)
Task total: 50
Season Total: 1650
...; 10.2; 10.3; 10.4; 10.5; 10.6; 10.7; ....; 10.9; 10.10
15.1; 15.2; 15.3; 15.4; 15.5; 15.6; 15.7; 15.8; ....; .... (3x)
20.1; 20.2; .....; 20.4; 20.5; 20.6; 20.7; 20.8; 20.9; 20.10
Kim wrote: "20.5 Africa Review:
4.0/5.0 - This books started out as a 5.0 for the first half, the middle really dragged, the ending was good, so a 4 star all in all. This was a book that I had to stop and ta..."
We'll need title and author. ;-)
? Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
10.2 ChristmasPitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory by Mickey Rapkin
I heard an interview with the author probably soon after Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory was published. I was intrigued. It is about college a cappella groups, competition and recording. I finally read it because of a book challenge task that asked to read a book from a list of books titled I Only Watched the Movie. I had no idea the book had inspired a movie. This is one case where the movie has an advantage in that you probably hear some a cappella groups perform.
The writing here is uneven and filled with jargon, college-boy humor, industry gossip, a few humorous tales and a few heart-rending stories. I only would recommend this book to readers who are interested in the history of collegiate a cappella.
+10 task
+10 review
Task total: 20
Season total: 550
15.4 The Name of the Game - Round 2Victim 2117 by Jussi Adler-Olsen
Square 3C - letter A = author born in Aug.
Square 6C - letter N = nordic noir
Square 10B - letter T =
Word = ANT
15 task
____
15
(corrected) Running total: 1195
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Reading with Style
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Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920's by Frederick Lewis Allen
In the prologue to this book, we step into the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Smith: a moderately well-to-do couple, somewhere in middle America, circa 1919. This is to set the stage to show how much change is going to be rolling out in the next decade.
What follows is an in-depth analysis of the radical changes in politics, entertainment, changes in morals and hemlines, and emergence of nefarious groups like the Mob and the KKK. Quoting another goodreads review: "As James Howard Kunstler said in a recent podcast (probably quoting somebody else), 'History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.'" That is EXACTLY the feeling I had the entire time I was reading this!
The review I was originally going to write for this book was going to be full of "well-researched" and "felt like you were living through it" comments, until I looked more closely at the original date of publishing and read the author's bio: this was first published in 1931, so not much research was necessary as it was all lived first-hand (by an editor of the Atlantic no less, someone who would have been not only aware but critically analytical of the fast-changing society). Loved the writing style, loved the walk through another time, loved the reminder that no matter how exceptional (or exceptionally stupid/evil/advanced/whatever-other-adjective-you-want-to-add-here) you think our current times are things have really not changed all that much after all.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+5 Combo 10.3
Task total: 35
Season total: 1355