Reading with Style discussion
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SU 2016 Completed Tasks
20.10 Meta fictionThe Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood
+20 Task
+10 Combo (10.2, 20.7)
Post Total: 30
Season Total: 385
10.5 Mod's TaskUnderworld by Don DeLillo
+10 Task
+15 Jumbo (832 pages)
+5 Combo (20.3-2000 William Deans Howell Medal)
Post Total: 30
Season Total: 415
20.2 The Gods!The Hidden Oracle by Rick Riordan
low lexile, no styles.
+20 task
Task Total = 20
Grand Total = 370
15.3 FYTS Time Traveler2014-1969
Acadian Redemption: From Beausoleil Brossard to the Queen's Royal Proclamation by Warren A. Perrin
Published 2004
+15 Task
+5 Non-Fiction
Post Total: 20
Season Total: 220
10.1 Square PegThe Battle for Room 314: My Year of Hope and Despair in a New York City High School by Ed Boland
As a teacher, I am simultaneously drawn to and skeptical of the large genre of books that are about someone's tough time in the classroom, especially when that someone didn't teach for very long before writing the book! However, there are a couple reasons why Ed Boland's book got mostly past my skepticism. First, he took the job seriously and tried to get really good at the craft, even when he wasn't successful. Second, he rarely (but sometimes) lapses into "oh, poor kids, lucky I am here to save them" -- mostly he is quite honest about his own failures, when they occur, and his students' behavior, however it reflects on him or them. And finally, it's well written and makes for an interesting read.
+10 task
+10 review
Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 140
20.9 PoliticsEvicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
This book completely blew me away. Thanks for the recommendation in group reads! It read, to me, like really high-quality journalism -- the stories of individuals, clearly well studied and carefully written, woven consistently through the informational parts of the text, rather than plopped at the front as a hook to draw me in. I came to feel like I knew the main actors in the book. I also walked away with some horrifying new information -- like the "nuisance laws" which incentivize landlords to summarily evict tenants who call 911, even for the kinds of things that you would suppose society wants 911 called for! It highlights the catch-22 that many lower-income folks find themselves in and makes the housing crisis feel comprehensible (and thus maybe solvable).
+20 task
+10 combo (10.10; 20.7 - MD)
+10 review
Task Total: 40
Grand Total: 180
20.3 Winners!Uprooted by Naomi Novik
This novel got such amazing, glowing reviews, that perhaps I was a little too hyped up to read it. I definitely enjoyed the book, but didn't fall in love. The story follows Agnieszka, who is taken by the Dragon (the local wizard). The area gives up 1 girl every ten years and doesn't know what happens to them in those years, though they seem to turn out fine in the end! Agnieszka, however, has magic, and so her time with the Dragon will train her to use her magic. From there, she gets embroiled in some nasty intra-kingdom political disputes and faces down all manner of complexities, magical and otherwise. It's a fun book, great descriptions of magic, and interesting world-building -- worth reading, for sure, just not as life-changing as I had been led to expect!
+20 task (Nebula winner 2016)
+10 review
Task Total: 30
Grand Total: 210
10.7 First LetterShip of Magic by Robin Hobb
+10 Task
+15 Jumbo (880 pages)
Post Total: 25
Season Total: 425
10.2 Picador/ViragoI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
This book is on the 1001 Books You Must Read list despite it being an autobiography...strange since almost all the other works are fiction. Yet, in this small memoir of her childhood, Maya Angelou exhibits her strength and courage that she exuded as the poet I came to know as a public personality. I "read' this soon after having read The Color Purple... and found myself again in disbelief how a step-father could rape his pre-teen step-daughter. We learn that Maya's real Dad is also quite a loser... but her Mom sounds like a really interesting character that I want to know more about...perhaps that is done in one of the successive books in the series. I listened to this in the car...read by the author herself...which was a treat. Four stars.
Task +10 (Virago)
Review +10
Combo +5 (10.7)
total= 25
grand total= 430
10.6 Traveling the DDC wayThe House by the Lake: A Story of Germany by Thomas Harding
+10 Task (DDC 943.1546)
Points this post: 10
RwS total: 115
FYTS total: 15
Season Total: 130
20.9 Political (Kate S's Task)The Lions of Lucerne (Scot Harvath #1) by Brad Thor
approval on help thread
Review
This was a fairly sizeable book (500+ pages) and not particularly something I’d usually read so it was a bit of a slow start for me but within 20% of the book, I couldn’t put it down and pretty much finish reading it in 2 days. I’ve really enjoyed the mystery as that’s one of my comfort reads though I was never a fan of political thrillers, I found this book wasn’t too political. It was, of course, set around the political world with the president of the United States being kidnapped and the reason behind it was obviously political however the book itself, centred on Scot Harvath as he tried to rescue the president, wasn’t political in tone, for the most part. The Lions of Lucerne is a fast-paced thriller with explosive actions and a very resourceful main character; of course, the fact that he’s very good looking and an ex-SEAL don’t hurt! ;)
+20 Task
+5 Jumbo (512 pages)
+10 Review
Post Total: 35
Season Total: 385
20.2 - The Gods!Ilium - Dan Simmons
Dan Simmons is the master of the literary sci-fi epic. He can somehow make nearly-extinct, lazy humans, half-robot, half-organic Jovian aliens, and Greek gods on Mars all mesh together in a way that is not only fantastically complex and interwoven in the best possible way, but it actually makes sense!
I'll admit I was skeptical when I started reading. I'm pretty picky about my sci-fi (though I've loved all of the other Dan Simmons that I've read) and the first few chapters felt a little slow and bogged down in detail. Once things start moving though, they don't stop. Simmons does a phenomenal job with capturing the different voices and personalities of not only the different characters, but the different races in the book. Each is distinct, but there are similarities between, say, Mahnmut and Orphu, that differentiate them from Hockenberry and the scholics, or the gods. There are tons, and I mean TONS, of literary references, not just to the Greek classics, but to Shakespeare and Proust and H.G. Wells, and each one somehow fits perfectly and makes total sense. Every aspect of this novel is so complex, but so well and completely executed.
The whole wormhole/different time periods aspect confused me a little (I'm told that gets explained a little more in the next book) but not enough to detract from my enjoyment of the novel. Simmons is pretty good for getting complicated element like those into the story in a way that doesn't feel dumbed-down, but is accessible enough that you can grasp the gist of how it impacts the story.
It does end on a pretty major cliffhanger though, so I guess I'll be reading Olympos sooner than I'd planned!
+20 task
+10 review
+10 jumbo
+10 combo (10.7; 20.3 - Locus Award)
Post total: 50
Grand total: 255
15.1 FYTS: Time Traveler2014-1964
Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works by Elizabeth Green
Publish date 2014
+15 Task
+5 Bonus (nonfiction)
Post Total: 20
Season Total: 230
Valerie wrote: "20.6 WarCity of Women by David R. Gillham
#101 on WW2 list
This isn’t a book I would normally have chosen to read, however it has been sitting on my shelf for a..."
+ 5 combo 10.7
Ed wrote: "10.2 Picador/ViragoI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
This book is on the 1001 Books You Must Read list despite it being an autobiography...strange since ..."
+5 combo 10.6 - shelved as "B" at BPL, which we have discussed as qualifying for 920 under DDC
10.9 It's Personal!Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear
Review: The eponymous novel about the feisty Maisie Dobbs tells a story-within-a-story overcoming the heavy shackles of birth in a class-centric society and the even heavier weights of the horrifying memories of World War I.
Maisie is the only daughter of lowly worker Frankie Dobbs, who is promoted up through the world due to her own pluck, intelligence and a pair of benevolent employers from maid to student, nurse and finally detective.
The novel is set in 1929 and deals with the psychological and physical scaring left from the Great War. It paints a credible picture of a generation of young men killed or maimed on the battlefields of Europe. In this context it is a bit strange that the novel feels light. Most of the characters are nice people, making it seem like the book is cuddling the readers.
The novel was enjoyable but paled when compared to the punch of Farthing.
+10 Task
+20 Combo (10.7, 20.3 ( Macavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel (2004)), 20.5 (#34), 20.6 (WWI, #48))
+10 Review
Task total: 40 pts
Grand total: 345 pts
20.7 U.S.I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
MA for Massachusetts
Review: In this book Maya Angelou writes brilliantly and succinctly about growing up as a black girl in the 1930's deep South. Living a nomadic life Maya and her brother Bailey moves from the paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas to their mother family in St. Louis only to move back again a year later, before their mother moves them with her to California and in the end San Francisco.
Maya Angelou describes the places and the community vividly, but what amazed me the most was the lack of sentimentality Maya Angelou puts forward in the describing of her childhood and youth, which both makes the narrative more readable and stronger in the emotional impact.
+20 Task
+15 Combo
+10 Review
Task total: 45 pts.
Grand total: 390 pts
20.7 U.S.A Far Cry from Kensington by Muriel Spark
Review:
This is the second Muriel Spark book I've read (the other is The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie). I loved Miss Jean Brodie, so came to this with high expectations. While I did not love this nearly much, the book really demonstrates the range of this author. The books are basically completely different from one another, yet the acerbic wit some through as a common thread.
Here we find a fabulous narrator, Mrs. Hawkins. She tells us of the strange crowd around her in a rooming house and in her jobs in publishing. Mix in some mystery and intrigue, a touch of romance, and end up with a thoroughly enjoyable read.
+ 20 task (MS)
+ 10 review
+ 10 combo (10.10, 20.5)
Task total: 40
Grand total: 430
20.10 MetafictionA God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
Review:
Read this in print; do not listen to the audiobook. The constantly changing time and place is impossible to follow as an audio. I am not sure how much better it would be in print, but it has to be better than the mess that was the audio version.
I adored the ending to this book and I like some of the characters and found the ones interesting to read, so I was willing to finish this, but only barely. I loved Life After Life, so had been really looking forward to this. The author's note at the end was also quite interesting and helped explain the vision of the book even though I found that the book did not fulfill the author's vision.
+ 20 task
+ 10 review
+ 5 combo (10.10)
Task total: 35
Grand total: 465
10.8 Come to the FairThe Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy by Stewart O'Nan
The circus tent had been waterproofed with six thousand gallons of white gasoline and eighteen thousand pounds of paraffin--a disaster waiting to happen. The circus played to an afternoon crowd of 7,000 people in Hartford, Connecticut. It was July 6, 1944, and the circus and the city workers were both shorthanded since so many men were away fighting in the war. The largest exits were blocked by animal chutes where the lions and other big cats were exiting. A small fire of unknown origin quickly turned into an inferno raging out of control. The crowd, mostly women and children, was in a panic and over 168 people were killed from burns and being trampled. Many more were hospitalized with painful burns and other injuries. The disaster preparations that the state had made for the war were put to good use. Plasma had been stocked, stretcher crews had been trained, and hospitals were stocked with a large supply of bandages.
In the book Stewart O'Nan also covers some earlier fires, the legal aspects including compensation, the police investigations, and the unidentified victims. The only good things to come out of this horrible event were better regulations to prevent fires in the future.
The book has an enormous amount of documentation with hundreds of names. It follows chronological order so you might see the name of someone escaping from the circus, then encounter it again fifty pages later when they are in the hospital, then again seventy pages later when they receive compensation from the circus. So it's a book best read in a concentrated chunk of time so the reader remembers the people involved in the story. In some ways O'Nan has given a gift to historians by gathering up so much detailed historical information into this book. But a little less detail would have let the story flow more easily. The black and white photographs were terrific, illustrating important scenes without being lurid. Overall, I found it to be an interesting and moving book.
+10 task
+ 5 combo (10.6--974.63 at the Brooklyn Public Library)
+10 review
Task total: 25
Grand total: 385
10.9 It's Personal (Rosemary's Task)Paul Gauguin: An Erotic Life by Nancy Mowll Mathews
Paul Gauguin has always been one of my favorite artists and when I recently read that he once lived with Vincent Van Gogh.... I was intrigued and decided to read a biography. Well..my first take away is that Gauguin was an a..hole. He beat his wife and abandoned his many children and almost never gave them any love, care or money. He often begged and mooched off his friends and family. Other surprising things... I had no idea that Gauguin had been raised in Peru (He was half-Peruvian) I also don't know how I didn't know or remember that the reason that Van Gogh cut off his ear (and eventually committed suicide) was due to events dealing with his man-crush on Gauguin (or was it more than a crush?). I also learned that much of Gauguin's art is steeped in his desire to shock with his breaking sexual taboos.... sex with children for example. There is more than a hint that Gauguin may also have enjoyed gay intimacy at times as well. I don't think my appreciation for his art will be diminished but I will never be able to see his work in the same way.
task +10
review +10
combo +5 (10.7)
total= 25
grand total= 460
20.7 U.S.Of Love and Shadows by Isabel Allende
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... (will copy review at bottom of page)
+20 Task (Isabelle Allende, IA=Iowa)
+5 20.10 -Metafiction (I dont know why though)
+5 20. South America (Chile)
+5 10.7 First Letter
+10 Lost in Translation
+10 Review
Post Total: 55
Season Total: 95
Full Review below:
I really want to have a better review/opinion of this book. I really want to have a better review of Allende. Unfortunately, I don't for either. As I begin this review I upgraded form two- to three-stars, and I think this is why. This could be an important novel for someone. It deals with a difficult subject (the Pinochet regime/disappearances that plagued Chile in the late-1960's-1980's) and tries to add some 'everyday folk' perspective. I have a fairly extensive background on the subject, so for me it wasn't an eye-opening introduction to the atrocities of that epoch, but was actually somewhat trite in its presentation. And for this I blame Allende, who rightfully or not (not in my opinion) does have her place among modern Chilean authors. I likened the novel (which I slogged through and would have put down had I had the ability to do so...which apparently I lack of late) to a telenovela. The characters were contrived, the story beyond predictable, and...wow...really its only redeeming quality to me is the subject itself. Ya, I guess I don't have a lot good to say about this novel. I didn't like it, but I can justify it to someone. If you don't have any idea about what happened to the Chilean people under the Pinochet regime, perhaps this is an introduction which will spur you to learn more. If you do, and you want to read some Chilean lit...search elsewhere. (And I am afraid I had to knock it back to two-stars.)
10.9 It's PersonalNora Webster by Colm Tóibín
+10 Task
+10 Combo (10.2, 20.7)
Post Total: 20
Season Total: 445
10.4 - Opposite Lists (Light)The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón
This is the kind of book that reminds me why I love reading. It's everything I could possibly want in a novel, and the execution is beautiful! It's dark and Gothic, filled with mystery and intrigue, romance and scandal, twists and lies, all wrapped up in phenomenally beautiful prose.
This book grabbed me from page one and never let up. The atmosphere and the mystery of the novel absolutely mesmerized me and sucked me in completely. I loved all the twists and turns, and apart from one big one which I suspected, they all came as such a shock that I actually gasped out loud at a few. But there's also humour! Fermin had me laughing to myself basically any time he tried to bestow his sage advice on poor Daniel.
I don't want to say too much about this novel, because I feel like what made it so great is the intricacy of the mystery and the gradual revelation of the cast of characters, but suffice to say that this has been my favorite book for 2016 so far by a long shot!
+10 task
+10 review
+10 LiT
+5 combo (20.3 - Prix du meilleur livre étranger - roman)
Post total: 35
Grand total: 240
Task 20.6 WarWorld War One Literature
On July 08, 2016: #60
Coming Up for Air (1939) by George Orwell (Paperback, 278 pages)
Review: This novel is one of Orwell’s pre-World War II novels. Our main character, George Bowling, is our narrator. It is 1938 and he is 45 years old. The novel consists of George telling the listener of his life. Most of the novel is nostalgia for English country life 1900-1914, combined with nostalgia of living as a preteen boy during those years. The prose is straightforward, easy to understand and easy to empathize with. The later part of the novel concerns life in 1938. George Bowling sees that war is coming -- and he's had enough of war in what we now call the First World War. It is disconcerting to read the passages about how German Jews are over-reacting to the threat of Hitler and concentration camps. Of course, he is writing in 1939, and in that year nobody outside of Hitler’s group really believed that a Holocaust could happen. Still, I wonder, if Orwell had the opportunity to revise this novel post-World War II, would he modify those passages about concentration camps. Overall: Recommended for readers of literary fiction, and for those interested in English life in the first half of the twentieth century.
+20 Task
+05 Combo (#10.7 “C”)
+10 Review
Task Total: 20 + 05 + 10 = 35
Grand Total: 220 + 35 = 255
10.3 HolidayThe Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Lexile: 850
Review:
I did not really know what this book was about, just that the was a lot of hype and a recent movie. I found the book relatively predictable, bit still rather enjoyable. The parents of the narrator came through as fully credible characters, something not always well done in young adult books.
The book toys with emotions in a pretty serious way, but since it only took me two days to read, I'm willing to forgive this. I think this would be a really helpful book for a teen who had a friend diagnosed with cancer.
The narrator for the audiobook did a nice job bringing the story alive.
+10 task
+10 review
Task total: 20
Grand total: 485
20.2 The Gods!:The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
Lexile 740, so sadly no style points.
+20 task
Task total: 20
Grand total: 100
10.10 - Group ReadsLife: A User's Manual by Georges Perec
This was one of those books that I didn't enjoy quite as much as I thought I ought to - read with admiration rather than enjoyment. I probably would have liked it more if I'd read it more slowly, but it's a library book and I needed to finish it for Bingo, so I went faster than I otherwise might have.
On the front jacket flap of my copy it says among other things, "Serge Valene, one of the inhabitants of a large Parisian apartment block, has conceived the idea of a painting which will show in exact detail the inside of each apartment within the building, every person, every object. As he thinks of his picture, he contemplates the lives of all the people he has ever known or heard about in sixty years of living there."
I read this after I finished the book. I thought, Really? Oh, wow, okay, so that's what was happening! That's why there are so many long descriptions of pictures on walls and objects on shelves. Does it say that in the book somewhere? If so, I missed it. I wish I'd read that first...
+10 Task
+10 Review
+10 Combo (10.7, 20.3 French-American Foundation Translation Prize for Fiction 1988)
+10 LiT (from French)
+ 5 Jumbo (581 pages)
Post Total: 45
Season Total: 290
15.6 5 yrs through summer -time traveler (2015-1970)1990
The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
25 task
5 jumbo bonus
_____
30
(corrected) Running total: 365
20.6 WarTo End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 by Adam Hochschild
Hochschild intends to present two sides to this war: that of combatants and that of war protesters. While other countries cannot be excluded, he focuses almost exclusively on Britain. He starts with giving us the prewar environment and introduces us to the main participants. The next five parts are the war years, one part for each calendar year. In the final part is the Treaty and what happens in the lives of the major participants beyond.
Those of us who remember only Vietnam to the present were made to feel as if anti war protests were invented in the 1960s. I did not know there even was an anti war movement in WWI, and I now have no reason to believe there haven't always been such protesters. Hochschild doesn't give himself room enough to tell us about the movement in countries other than Britain, Germany and Russia. To say that Britain was intolerant would be an understatement. They jailed many. Some Conscientious Objectors were taken to the war anyway, and then shot when they refused to take up arms.
There is no background leading up to the war in Russia, but we are told that more than a million Russian soldiers simply walked off the battlefield and returned to their farms. There was plenty of political unrest, as we know because the Bolshevik Revolution happened concurrently. I didn't realize that Germany helped that revolution succeed by liberating Lenin from neutral Switzerland and putting him on a train back to St. Petersburg.
Hoshschild spares no words showing us how incompetent British General Haig was. Haig still believed that the cavalry was the winning instrument of war, failing to understand that that the new weapon - the machine gun - would neutralize any mounted charge. He also seemed not to understand that cannons could not do anything to barbed wire. He just sent men across no man's land to be annihilated. Hundreds of thousands of men were ordered to move against the Germans, only to be slaughtered in wave after wave.
There is so much to be read here. I will never be one who says we shouldn't fight to defend ourselves, but each time I read about this war, it becomes every more plain that winning needs to take place off the battlefield as well as well as on it. I cannot let this go without at least one quote.
Would we have devised such means of inflicting pain, terror, and death without the First World War? Probably yes, for human beings have been inventing new ways to kill each other for thousands of years. But the scale of the conflict and the way the belligerents mobilized their economies for total war accelerated such developments greatly, and left a bloodied Germany determined to seek revenge. The most toxic legacy of the conflict and its misbegotten peace settlement lies in the hardly imaginable horrors that followed. If we were allowed to magically roll back history to the start of the twentieth century and undo one — and only one — event, is there any doubt that it would be the war that broke out in 1914?This is not an easy read - not because of the prose nor the structure of the work, but because of the subject. Still, it is a 5-star read for me.
+20 Task
+10 Combo (10.6, 20.3 - Dayton Literary Peace Prize)
+10 Review
Task total = 40
Grand Total = 215
10.6 Traveling the DDC wayLiar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott
Review: I’d heard so many good things about Karen Abbott going into this book that I was really excited to read it. The execution in some ways lived up to expectations, especially in the moment, but writing this review a week or so after finishing it is making me think maybe I wasn’t as satisfied with it as I thought. It’s a kind of pop history type book, so there were a lot of things that weren’t specifically cited, and it bothered me a little. There are many times when Abbott, ostensibly relying on diaries and memoirs written by the women she’s chronicling, states things like “she felt this” or “she thought that,” which kind of rankled. The background history about the Civil War was pretty basic, and given that I took two intense semesters of Civil War history in college, I didn’t really need it. Anyway, it’s not a bad book, but not amazing and definitely not all that scholarly.
+10 Task (973.785)
+10 Review
+5 Jumbo (513 pages)
+10 Combo (10.7, 20.7)
Task Total: 35
Grand Total: 735
*This doesn’t qualify for BINGO since I was more than 50% through it at the beginning of July*
10.7 First LetterMurder on the Mountain by Jamie Fessenden
Review: Murder on the Mountain was a murder mystery-romance hybrid that ended up kind of falling flat on both accounts for me. Continuing my inexplicable trend of choosing books with people who have been widowed, Kyle begins the novel having not dated in the five years (!!) since his wife died, but who is thinking more and more about exploring his attraction to men that he’s had his entire life. He’s comfortable being bi, and even shared that with his wife, but being a police detective is making him a little hesitant to fully embrace it. That conflict doesn’t really pan out – once he meets Jesse he quickly tells his partner and embraces that part of his life. I did appreciate that since the book only takes place over the course of weeks the couple is not necessarily in love at the end, but are happy and together. It was fine, but not anything special really.
+10 Task
+10 Review
Task Total: 20
Grand Total: 755
10.8 Come to the FairAvenue of Mysteries by John Irving
+10 Task: the two main characters grow up in the circus in Mexico and some of the most important plot points of the book come out of that experience.
Task Total: 10
Grand Total: 545
10.7 First Letter (Tien's Task)Psyche in a Dress by Francesca Lia Block
+10 Task:
Task Total: 10
Grand Total: 555
20.8 Kotick (Amanda's Task)The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore
+20 Task
+10 Lost in Translation
Task Total: 30
Grand Total: 585
20.10 Meta fictionShalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie
+20 Task
+10 Combo: 10.7 First Letter (Tien's Task) / 20.8 Kotick
Task Total: 30
Grand Total: 615
20.1 South AmericaHow I Became a Nun by César Aira
+20 Task (born in Argentina)
+5 Combo (20.7)
+10 Lost in translation
Post Total: 35
Season Total: 480
10.4 Opposite ListsFahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#11 on darkest list
I really thought I'd read this book in school 20 years ago. But after reading it this month the only part I can be sure I'd read before was the afterward, because that was familiar. I had a complete different story related to censorship and reading stuck in my head that I thought was this book. Nope.
The language was richly dense, a jungle almost, without having the elaborate feel of language used in magical realism books, if that makes any sense. The story was eerie and haunting and compelling. The action moved somewhat jerkily but that wasn't out of line with the whole feel of the book, so it was good.
It's only aged a little, even though it's over 60 years old at this point. The way the digital revolution developed, I think that the idea of thoughtful works being swept away is more farfetched than it might have felt at the time. But then there are other elements that seem to resonate but that didn't exist at the time the book was written, like reality tv and extreme political correctness. This is still an extremely important story as well as being an interesting one.
+10 task
+10 combo (10.5 #15 American, 20.3 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award 1984)
+10 review
Task total: 30
Grand total: 670
Task 10.7 First Letter (Tien's Task)Read a book with a title that starts with a letter found in OLYMPICS.
Staged to Death (Caprice De Luca Mystery #1) (2013) by Karen Rose Smith (Goodreads Author) (Paperback, 384 pages)
+10 Task
Task Total: 10
Grand Total: 255 + 10 =265
20.8 KotickThe Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
Assignment, 950 Lexile
Mary Morstan has been receiving large pearls in the mail from an unknown source since her father's death. She contacts Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson after she receives a letter to meet with an anonymous person to right an injustice done to her. An unusual man, Thaddeus Sholto, tells the trio that Mary is one of the heirs to a treasure. As they go to meet with a Sholto family member, they come upon a murder victim in a locked room.
The plot is complex with elements of the crook's confession going all the way back to the Indian Rebellion of 1857. Like much literature of the 19th Century when Great Britain was a colonial power, the book does come across as racist toward the native people. However, Indian art objects and clothing are depicted as beautiful and exotic.
Holmes is brilliant and an observer of the smallest details as he solves the murder. Watson is warm and caring as he falls in love with Mary Morstan, and acts as Holmes faithful assistant. Holmes has no use for love and says, "Love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true, cold reason which I place above all things. I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgment."
The mystery was entertaining with the wonderful partnership of Holmes and Watson, as well as other interesting characters. The London detective work was great, but the plot got overly convoluted when it worked back to India in the criminal's confession. (3 1/2 stars)
+20 task
+10 review
Task total: 30
Grand total: 415
Post 394 Cory Day wrote: "10.6 Traveling the DDC wayLiar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott
Review: I’d heard so many good things about Karen A..."
This doesn't work for 20.7 as KA isn't one of the state abbreviations. Did you mean a different task for that combo?
Nope, I just made a mistake. I'll edit the post when I get to my computer.
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Pines by Blake Crouch
+10 Task
Post Total: 10
Season Total: 355