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Gold Digger: The Remarkable Baby Doe Taborby Rebecca Rosenberg
"A big Catholic wedding, white dreds, eat cake." p 197
Review
This is about Lizzie "Baby Doe" Tabor. She came out west to Denver because her husband b ought a gold mine. He leaves her after she finds out she is pregnant. She falls for Jake Tabor who is already married. They are attracted to each other. He wants to marry Baby Doe so he divorces his wife. She already divorced hers after he left her.
Baby Doe is a strong woman for her time. Working in mines and divorcing your spouse isn't something women did in the late nineteenth century. She shows courage. She was determined to make it on her own in the wold. This is a fictional story. It would be an amazing story if it was true.
I enjoyed this story. I won it in a giveaway.
Task +20
Revirw + 10
Grand total: 170

When the Ground Is Hard by Malla Nunn
Lexile: 830
While reading this book telling the story of 1965 boarding school in Swaziland, I couldn't help but compare it to Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School, which I read earlier this year. Of course, the surroundings are quite different between a boarding school for mixed race students and preppy East Coast fanciness, but so much of the experience felt shared. The question of what role class plays, how to fit into a racially divided world, and where friendships are found and tested.
The book is marketed as young adult, and it reads that way to some extent. The relationship between the students is more cute than deeply described. Some of the more difficult moments of the book are told with distance, making them less gut-wrenching and graphic than they might otherwise be. But the issues grappled with are major and the author doesn't shy from wondering about the way the world could/should be different. The main character develops over the course of the book and is introspective about her relationship to her (mostly absent) white father, about her interactions with racist whites, and her feelings about the social structure of the school (where kids sort based on wealth, skin color, and family status).
I really enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it for middle school and younger high school readers.
+15 Task (Swaziland)
+20 Project bonus (Swaziland)
+10 Review
Task total: 45
Grand total: 425

Rosemary wrote: "20.6 The Color Purple
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Lexile 880
+5 Oldies
+5 Combo 10.3
"
Oh, as this fits 10.3, please could I move it to that task?
That is minus 10 points, plus 10 points for the oldies and combo you added, thank you!
So I think my total is still 680

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
This story has two timelines: one follows from the end of Small Angry Planet and the other, starting some 20 years earlier, gives the backstory of one of the characters. It's hard to say much more without spoilers, although I think it is quickly clear how the two are related, and this helps the reader to understand the motivations behind what is happening.
I loved this, and in fact I enjoyed it more than Small Angry Planet, which seemed fragmented to me. Despite the two timelines, this second instalment has a very limited cast of characters, which I thought allowed it to achieve more depth.
cake: "The kit took a handful of chocolate cake and stuffed it into its mouth." ("The kit" is Sidra, one of the AI characters.)
+10 Task
+10 Review
+20 Combo (10.4, 10.5 two important characters are AI, 10.6, 20.9)
Post Total = 40
Season Total = 720

The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler
This story of a mismatched couple begins with their meeting just after Pearl Harbor and continues into the twenty-first century. Michael and Pauline are polar opposites, and their relationship is explosive. As they work their way from fight to fight, bringing up three children and moving to the suburbs, Michael’s family grocery store also moves and expands, and the family has losses and gains.
Reading this was an unusual experience. I didn’t think it was great while I was reading, and I don’t think I would read it again, but I was never bored. I always wanted to know what happened to these infuriating characters next.
+10 Task
+10 Review
Post Total = 20
Season Total = 740

Gold Digger: The Remarkable Baby Doe Taborby Rebecca Rosenberg
"A big Catholic wedding, white dreds, eat cake." p 197
Review
This is about Lizzie "Ba..."
I can't wait to read this one ---- thanks!
Having grown up in Colorado, I just have to add here that Baby Doe was definitely a real person:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Do...
I grew up visiting the mining town of Central City and we had our wedding reception at a favorite restaurant in Blackhawk which are both mentioned in this article.

Countries of the World: Republic of the Congo
Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou
+15 Task: Republic of the Congo
+20 Bonus CotW Brazzaville, Congo
+10 Non - Western
Task Total: 45
Season total: 360

Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith
+15 Task: Vietnam
Task Total: 15
Season total: 375

Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke
+20 Task: set in Texas
Task Total: 20
Season total: 395

The Singing Of The Dead by Dana Stabenow
+20 Task Chapter 2. There was caribou sausage, smoked fish, moose steaks, deer stew, ..."
No, I meant 10.2.

The Singing Of The Dead by Dana Stabenow
+20 Task Chapter 2. There was caribou sausage, smoked fish..."
Of course! Thank you!

Shadow and Light by Jonathan Rabb
This second in the trilogy has Nikolai Hoffner looking at Germany's film industry on the eve of talking pictures. Hoffner had not been aware that sound could be added to film. One of his contacts tells him:
"Without sound," said Vogt, "all you have is shadow and light. Flat, soulless barren. Sound is the third dimension. Sound is what gives it texture. Sound is what makes it real."In Rosa, the first of the trilogy, author Jonathan Rabb conjectures what might have happened to Rosa Luxembourg between the date of her killing and the date of her body being discovered. In Shadow and Light he conjectures what would have happened had the Germans invented a device for sound on film superior to what the Americans invented. Hoffner was always one step ahead of me. Sometimes, though, the facts were also leading him and in such a way that he had no clue where he was heading.
The characterization of Hoffner and Berlin between the wars is superb. The writing is definitely above average for the genre. Perhaps that is also why it wasn't as popular as I think it should have been.
I am anxious to get to the final installment of this trilogy (although I am sad that it is a trilogy and not a longer series). Will it be another blending of mystery and historical fiction together with some hybrid type of alternate history? I am coming to it 10 years after original publication. I have been buying used copies so the author isn't getting any benefit from my new found enthusiasm. And he apparently is no longer writing, so more's the pity. This is another 5-stars, although I think not quite as good as Rosa. (And if I've convinced anyone to read these, they are best read in order.)
+20 task (1927 Berlin)
+10 Review
Task total - 30
Season total = 410

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts by Joshua Hammer
+15 task
Post total: 15
Season total: 250

This Side of Murder by Anna Lee Huber
+20 task - 1919
+10 Combo - 10.4, 20.3
Task total: 30
Grand total: 330

India
The Secret Keeper of Jaipur. Alka Joshi
This book is the sequel to The Henna Artist which I read and enjoyed last year. It takes place 12 years later, in the late 1960s, and focuses on Malik, Lakshmi's young ward from the first book. He is now 20, and is apprenticing in the capital with an architectural firm when a disaster happens. He helps to uncover the truth and save an innocent man from ruin. It is very interesting to learn about the times and culture of India.
+15 Task
+10 review
Task total: 25
Running total: 220
10.7
15.3; 15.8
20.2;20.7;20.9

Lesotho
She Plays with the Darkness by Zakes Mda
+15 Task
+20 Project Bonus
Post Total: 35
Season Total: 415

The End is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses by Dan Carlin
I thoroughly enjoy Dan Carlin’s Hard Core History Podcasts. This is his first attempt at a book. It is an intriguing subject. How have we humans adapted to collapses of civilizations in the past—the Assyrians, the Romans, plagues, escalating war technologies up to the atomic bomb. And, if we are up to saving ourselves from an atomic war and/or climate change.
He doesn’t quite pull it together in my estimation. The chapter on whether or not our children are survivors because we don’t beat them did not make sense to me and didn’t add much to the discussion. The chapter tracing the debates around aerial warfare from WWI through WWII was fascinating and frightening. Carlin makes this observation “It takes time to get to a point of logical insanity.”
And then there was the excessive use of footnotes, not to site sources but as asides. He had sometimes three or four a page that made for difficult reading.
If Dan Carlin writes another book, I will give it a try. In the meantime, I will continue to listen to his podcasts.
+10 task
+10 review
+5 combo 10.4
Task total: 25
Season total: 175

Co. Aytch: A Confederate Memoir of the Civil War by Sam R. Watkins
Review
Here’s my first review for this season, and maybe the only one. The reason I feel compelled to write one for this book is because I just completed the audio version and I heard Pvt Sam Watkins of Company H (aytch) tell his story and am left with one of those feelings when you know you have just experienced the profound. My current residence is Chattanooga. One can’t escape the Civil War here. There is a huge National Battlefield Park encompassing several acres surrounding Chattanooga in which the battles of Lookout Mountain and Chickamauga were fought. It includes a vast National Military Cemetery. There are places in Chattanooga that saw fighting or military camps such as Orchard Knob and Missionary Ridge that are now known as city subdivisions, city parks or in the name of a school building. In the city nearly every block has a plaque, a monument, statue or antique cannon permanently placed as reminders to generations past to generations future of what happened here. The city was fought over on three occasions and early in the war fell into the hands of the Union despite being besieged and later campaigns to win it back by the Confederates. Being that Chattanooga was considered a gateway for the Confederacy with important railroads and the Tennessee River it was crucial to the South to have control. Tennessee suffered heavily from the Civil War and in some ways still is. It was a split loyalty state, tearing families apart, and it’s geographical location made it a crossroads for both Armies. Tennessee lost more soldiers in the war by far than any other state and second only to Virginia on battles fought in its borders.
Sam Watkins was one of those soldiers from Tennessee who fought in most of the bloodiest battles. This book tells in a most erudite manner the memories of a man who at 21 years eagerly signed up to go fight for States’ rights according to his interpretation of the US Constitution. He tells us not from the view of scholars and historians, or as an imagined story from a latter day Southerner, nor from the point of one of the generals or an expert in war tactics explaining why strategies worked or not or what the purpose of certain troop movements were. He had no idea what the strategies were or what other troops were doing. We see what he sees, a foot soldier on the ground, face to face with death, struggling to survive and maintain his dignity and carry on despite the daily destruction and loss all around him. One of the first of the Armies to organize was the 1st Tennessee Regiment CSA. With the romance of becoming a hero and defending the motherland playing the piper’s tune in their thoughts, he and his buddies, set off blissfully looking forward to “going to kill Yankees”. They leave with the praise of their town and the pride of their families. It isn’t long though before the thoughts of glory wear off and reason for fighting becomes more of a duty to protect their homes. Now killing Yankees is for revenge of comrades lost. The officers are seen as oppressive and almost an enemy unto themselves, with President Davis as Villain in Chief. While Generals can resign out of pique, the lowly privates’ one year of enlistment is not honored and will be shot for deserters if they try to leave. A General might stay behind lines without killing a single enemy, while the privates are shot, killed, wounded and maimed dying unburied and unnamed but the Generals get credit, newspaper accolades and high offices. While officers ride on fine horses accompanied by their staff, the privates march for 2-3 days with no rations, with rags for shoes or none at all. By the last few bloody battles our protagonist remarks that of his 120 fellow recruits from his home alone only, 5 come back and all are wounded. Out of the 3000 men of his regiment, only 65 are there at the surrender. He comes to see that not all the officers were malicious after many were also killed in battle. The book is written twenty years after the war’s end and with age he admits his views softened. He came to realize that the war was doomed from the beginning. That the Yankees aren’t really the enemy, but soldiers like himself. He begins and ends his tale with this point: There really is no East and West or North and South. We’re all on a big ball floating in space and by like thought there is only Americans living in this country. Thats all. No matter the area or beliefs, there are only Americans here.
***** currently the audiobook is free for Audible.com members in the pluscatalog
+20 pts - Task
+10 pts - Combo (10.4, 20.1)
+10 pts - Oldies ( 1882)
+10 pts - Review
Task Total - 50 pts
1/2 finish - 50 pts
New Task Total - 100 pts

Jodi Thomas was born in Texas. Link to wikipedia page posted in help section.
Dinner on Primrose Hill. Jodi Thomas
2.5/5.0 - The book was fine, but it wasn't special. I found myself having to suspend disbelief especially regarding the three romances in the book. One couple, in their early 40s, had known each other briefly 20 years before, but neither wanted to mention it. Hello, elephant in the room. Another, in their 20s, didn't act like any college students that I've known. The final couple was classic good girl, bad boy. The bomb plotline seemed a little hokey, and what was the point of Crystal, a red herring?
+20 Task
+10 review
+10 combo (10.4, 20.3)
Task total: 40
Running total: 260
10.7
15.3; 15.8
20.2;20.7;20.8;20.9

The Sanctuary Sparrow by Ellis Peters
Despite being such a small place (Shrewsbury in 1140) a lot of bad things happen!
This time the monastery becomes the place of sanctuary (literally) to an accused thief and murderer. Luckily for the young wandering minstrel, the angry mob had acted in haste and the victim wasn’t actually dead. As I have come to expect from Ellis there are twists and turns, a charming love story within, and insight into human nature – through which we are capably shepherded by Brother Cadfael. I really enjoy the continuing characters in this series. Ellis made them into memorable individuals, so you don’t have to struggle to remember from the previous instalments. 4*
10 task
10 review
5 oldie
10 combo 10.2, 20.3
_____
35
Running total: 510

The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove by Christopher Moore
Moore calls himself an author of absurdist fiction. He is also another author who has a knack for humor. The books in this series take place in Pine Cove, which is a (fictional) small town on the coast of California. It is populated by people whom I would refer to as ‘characters’, which of course what makes the story. Well, that and the dragon (the lust lizard) who wakes up from the ocean floor and ends up in Pine Cove. As you would expect, hi-jinks occur – not in the terror filled horror story way, instead in the hilarious ‘this can’t be happening’ way. Along the way, some people become empowered, some find love, and some get eaten. 4*
20 task
10 review
_______
30
Running total: 540

You’ve Got Murder by Donna Andrews
This is a tale in which a computer- an artificial intelligence personality to be exact, Turing Hopper (always referred to as female) has become sentient. Her programmer, Zack, has been missing...and she is concerned. She contacts two allies who have come to recognize her as sentient to unravel the mystery of Zack's disappearance. She designs some elaborate plans which include transferring her sentient self into the "body" of a robot. So far,ok. But, for me,things go whacky when the bad guys show up. I don't want to say more because someone may want to read this...but I wouldn't recommend it. I'm not a computer geek...but even for me,this 2002 book is already outdated. Not awful but just 2 stars.
task =10
Review=10
Comb0= 5 (10.4)
task total= 25
Grand Total=605?
10.1; 10.2; 10.3; 10.4 (2x); 10.5; -----; -----; -----; -----; -----;
-----; 15.2; 15.3; -----; -----; 15.6; 15.7; -----; 15.9; 15.10;
-----; -----; 20.3; 20.4; ----; 20.6; 20.7; -----; -----; -----;

South Africa
The Good Doctor by Damon Galgut
There was lots I didn't understand about this. It is post-apartheid South Africa and takes place in one of the places where the government had tried to segregate blacks by "giving" them a homeland. The hospital is in a place that makes no sense and serves little purpose. The "real" hospital is an hour's drive away and where patients are taken when they need more than the minimal services the homeland hospital can provide.
That clearly all made sense to me since I can describe it. There is a doctor who comes to provide a government-required year of community service. He is appalled when he learns that, though he requested this placement, that there is really no community to serve. He must share a room with another doctor who has been at the hospital the last seven years. So here is my confusion: who is the good doctor of the title? Frank, who has been hiding out more or less, or Laurence, who is a do-gooder and who has no understanding of the country and the conditions?
There is not a lot of plot, but stuff happens to try the conscience of both of these men. In this way the novel relies more on characterization. Unfortunately, I thought it fell short. Or maybe it didn't fall short and I just didn't think much of either of these fellows. The writing style is better than OK, but it is only now that I've thought of it, so not good enough to rave about.
I managed to pick up another by this author and I'm sure I'll get around to reading it one day. Maybe I'll even like it better. This one is just 3-stars.
+15 Task
+10 Review
+10 Nonwestern
Task total = 35
Season total = 445

Coralie wrote: "10.4 Name
Paragon Walk by Anne Perry
+10 Task
+ 5 Oldies pub 1981
Task total = 15
Season Total: 75"
+5 Combo 20.7

Rebekah wrote: "20.10 Between the wars
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Pub 1926
+20 pts - Task
+5 pts - Combo(10.2)
+10 pts - Oldies
Task Total - 35 pts"
+5 Combo 10.3

Coralie wrote: "20.9 Birthdays
A Christmas Escape by Anne Perry
+20 Task p149 They were offered cakes and wine.
+5 Combo 10.4
Task total = 25
Season Total: 490"
+5 Combo 20.7

Ed wrote: "15.2 Western Africa-Mali
Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali by Mamadou Kouyaté
The history of Mali's founding is found in the oral traditions of it's "griots"- historian..."
+25 Oldies

Norma wrote: "20.3 - Our Town
Open Carry by Marc Cameron
+20 task
+5 Combo - 10.4
Task total: 25
Grand total: 240"
+5 Combo 20.8

Fan Fiction by Brent Spiner
FYI Trek fans, Spiner was born in Texas so you can listen to this for 20.8 (def do the audiobook)
If I had read this rather than..."
+5 Combo 10.4

Connie wrote: "20.9 Birthday
The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
Pg 359 "The young crow cocked his head, beady black eye looking first at the cake and then at her face, ba..."
+5 Jumbo

Rebekah wrote: " 20.6 The Color Purple
Mr. Standfast by John Buchan
+20 pts -Task
+10 pts - Oldies ( 1919)
Task Total - 20 ptsw"
+5 Combo 10.4

Coralie wrote: "20.9 Birthdays
The Singing Of The Dead by Dana Stabenow
+20 Task Chapter 2. There was caribou sausage, smoked fish, moose steaks, deer stew, blood stew, mulligan ste..."
+5 Combo 20.3

I show an addition error between post 258 and 259. 258 had a running total of 280, 259 had a book score of 50.
280+50=330, you only claimed 320. I hope that lines us back up. :)

Rebekah wrote: "20.10 Between the wars
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Pub 1926
+20 pts - Task
+5 pts - Combo(10.2)
+10 pts - Oldies
Task Total - 3..."
Thank you, Kate for catching extra points for me!

Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie
1985 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
+20 Task
+5 Combo (10.9 - two different narrators are telling the story, and both are not completely aligned in time)
+5 Oldies (1984)
Task total = 30
Season total = 280
.... ; 10.2 ; .... ; 10.4 (x2) ; .... ; 10.6 ; … ; .... ; .... ; 10.9 (x2)
.... ; .... ; .... ; .... ; .... ; .... ; .... ; .... ; .... ; ....
.... ; 20.2 ; 20.3 ; .... ; 20.5 ; .... ; 20.7 ; .... ; 20.9 (x4) ; 20.10

using Atwood lit. map
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
I read this book at exactly the right time. My sister just lost her husband after receiving a diagnoses that he had days or weeks to live. This book is Joan Didion's story about how her husband dies instantly at dinner a few days after Christmas...and while their daughter is in the hospital with a serious illness. She documents the grief process...and the"magical thinking" that was part of her process. Imagining what her husband would say, what he would be doing now, what they were doing a year ago on a particular day, etc. She avoided certain places and situations in order to avoid the reality of her husband's absence. It all rang true...and I can and cannot imagine myself going through the same difficulties. 5 stars.
task =10
Review=10
Comb0= 10 (10.4; 20.9*)
*- p.45- There were watercress sandwiches, champagne, lemonade,peach-colored napkins to match the sorbet that came with the cake, peacocks on the lawn."
task total= 30
Grand Total=650?
10.1; 10.2; 10.3; 10.4 (2x); 10.5; -----; 10.7; -----; -----; -----;
-----; 15.2; 15.3; -----; -----; 15.6; 15.7; -----; 15.9; 15.10;
-----; -----; 20.3; 20.4; ----; 20.6; 20.7; -----; -----; -----;

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu
+10 Task
Task Total: 10
Season total: 315"
This author was born in Canada and lives in Seattle. We will count that as an immigrant author for 20.7.

March by Geraldine Brooks
In Little Women, the girls' father is away for most of a year because of the civil war. This is a telling of the story of that year, in which he is a Union army chaplain, although Brooks has him working with former slaves in the south more than with the army, and gives him a back story involving him travelling around the south peddling goods as a very young man.
I had a patchy response to this. There were things I disliked, including March as a character. On the other hand there is some amazing detail on the harshness of life behind the lines of a war, where food may be scarce and local resentment dangerously high. There's very little about actual battles, but a lot about the aftermath or what might be called the backwash of the American civil war and the struggles of former slaves to make a living. I suppose it is well researched and can be trusted, since the book won the Pulitzer... and I appreciated that aspect.
+20 Task
+ 5 Combo (20.2)
+10 Review
Post Total = 35
Season Total = 775

I show an addition error between p..."
Yes thanks. I have had arithmetic errors all season!

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts by Joshua Hammer
+15 task
Post total: 15
Se..."
+20 points for Project Bonus

COUNTRY PROJECT: Benin
Why Goats Smell Bad and Other Stories from Benin by Raouf Mama
15 pts 15.2 Western Africa
20 pts Non green country
10 pts Review
10 pts Nonwestern See question thread
5 pts Oldies
This collection of folk tales is enhanced by brief explanations the place the stories within the cultural context of Benin and highlight the reasons why the story is important as an illustration of a cultural value. Mama includes stories that are moral lessons (respect others, be cooperative), explain natural phenomena (why chameleons act as they do), and are entertaining with a not so subtle moral (Yogbo the Glutton).
Mama’s intent is to preserve the cultual tradition of oral story telling and in some cases he describes how he has interpreted traditional stories to address specific issues much as an oral story teller might.
Charming book.
Task total: 60pts
Error Correction (see post 392): 10 pts
Total Season: 510 pts
10.1 10.2 … 10.4 10.5 10.6 … … … …
…15.2 … … … … …15.9 …
20.1 …’ 20.3 … … … … … … 20.9 20.10
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Books mentioned in this topic
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Authors mentioned in this topic
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The Singing Of The Dead by Dana Stabenow
+20 Task Chapter 2. There was caribou sausage, smoked fish, moose steaks, deer stew, blood stew, mulligan ste..."
This doesn't seem to fit 10.3, did you mean 20.3?