Reading with Style discussion

10.3 - Series

Known by Kendra Elliot

+10 task
+10 (missed combo points from post 764)

Task total: 20
Grand total: 745

20.10 My Comfort Zone
Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson

Review
This blank verse poem was written by Lord Alfred Tennyson and dedicated to the Prince Consort of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert.
It is a retelling of the King Arthur Saga. Published in twelve installments in the years 1859 – 1885, each featuring a knight of the Round Table, it was a lifetime’s work. Although he used Sir Thomas Malory’s earlier work of Le Morte de Arthur as a primary source as well as the Welsh Mabinogion, it retells the story with a Victorian slant. Despite that, there still is a lot of sex, adultery and corruption going on especially at the end when the long term affair of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, a widely known secret, is made public to all. Their affair has been the cause of disillusionment of several other knights who follow in Sir Lancelot’s footsteps as Sir Tristam with his Iseult. By the time it is publically know the court of Camelot has lost its purpose and glory leading to its demise and the ending of King Arthur himself, too good for this world.

+20 pts - Task
+20 pts - Combo (20.4*, 20.6,20.7,20.8)
+10 pts - Review
+10 pts - Oldies (1885)
+10 pts - Not a Novel

Task Total - 70 pts
Season Total - 945 pts

*I searched World Cat https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/9301657...
and since I can't read Russian, I then went to Google Translate
https://translate.google.com/#ru/en/К...

and now I'm finished with this season's challenge. I did more than I thought I would do but focused more on Russian authors I never read and some classic literature. Thanks mods!

Post 846 Don (The Book Guy) wrote: "10.7 Neutral Name

Love Big, Be Well: Letters to a Small-Town Church by Winn Collier, ratings 132. Written in epistolary style.

+10 Task
+10 Not a novel
+5 Combo, 10..."

I'm sorry, Don. I don't see this on the list of names for the 10.7 task. We'll score it for 10.5.

20.4 Night Watch

Lanark by Alasdair Gray

+20 Task
+ 5 Combo: 20.9 Jumbo (576)
+ 5 Oldies (1981)
+ 5 Jumbo (576)

Task Total: 35
Season Total: 2075

10.9 Double Trouble

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny

At this point, having a Louise Penny mystery running as an audiobook more or less at all times has become a habit. I enjoy the series and really enjoy the narration. The only downside to this is that I don't listen to audiobooks as often as I read paper/Kindle books, so the books tend to go slower. This book took a while to listen to, and so I did have to do quite a bit of going back and reminding myself of parts, though that's definitely my fault and not the author's! The story, like all the books in the series, is a solid mystery, with some twists and turns, all earned, and some surprises, and a lot of humor and heartwarming Three Pines moments. I am appreciating how Penny pokes a little fun at the genre/herself by slipping in some sly comments about how frequently this small town finds itself the scene of a murder mystery. That's something I often think about with series like this -- just how believable could it be that the very same small town consistently hosts murderers and victims on such a regular basis?? But Penny's lightheartedness about it makes it work. I would definitely recommend this, with the caveat that it will be much better in order -- I would start with book 1 if you're thinking of picking up the Louise Penny series!

+10 task (1284x mystery, 129x cultural)
+10 review

Task Total: 20
Season Total: 580

10.1 Square Peg

Sunburn by Laura Lippman

I picked this up because it was highly recommended on a literary agent's blog I follow, and because I'd previously read and enjoyed another Laura Lippman novel. I would say I enjoyed Sunburn, but didn't love it. The writing is terrific -- Lippman has some real writing chops that make most anything she writes pleasurable. I didn't find the plot quite as compelling. Sunburn tells the story of Polly, a woman with a checkered and mysterious past, who picks up and leaves her husband and child and ends up in a tiny Delaware town, where she ends up in a relationship with Adam, also passing through and an unlikely resident of this small town. The plot is chock full of surprises, and some of them were good enough to take my breath away, but I found a lot of the romance scenes less exciting than the murder and intrigue scenes.

+10 task
+10 review

Task Total: 20
Season Total: 600

20.6 Dead Souls
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
(Shakespeare)

Review
The summary does more than this one will do, but in a nutshell, Helena loves Demetrius who is engaged to Hermia. Hermia is in love with Lysander who loves her back. Hermia and Lysander leave Athens to go somewhere where they can marry without her having to die or live as a nun if she refuses to obey her father. Helena, trying to win favour with Demetrius, tells her this plan so they follow. The fairy King wants the Queen’s page and puck is a prankster. So, with a bit of a mistake by Puck, he has some serious problems with who loves whom amongst mortals and fairies and also has put the head of an ass (that’s donkey, thank you very much) on one of the actors who went into the same woods in order to rehearse.
Magic and fairies are not my cup of tea, and there wasn’t any big great statement that I could see here that I have seen in a few of his comedies, but it certainly is still fun.



+20 Task
+25 Oldie
+10 Review
+ 10 Not a Novel
+10 Combo 20.7 Fictional Royalty – Fairy King and Fairy Queen act, 20.4 Nightwatch
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1... in Russian

Task Total = 75

Season Total = 445

10.1 - Square Peg

Final Girls - Riley Sager

While this definitely wasn't the best thriller I've ever read, I have to give the author credit for keeping me on my toes throughout. I read this as a buddy read with a friend, and while we probably came up with at least a dozen theories as to what actually happened at Pine Cottage, we were nowhere even in the realm of close with any of them. So this definitely gets points for being unpredictable.

My main issue with the book in general is that a lot of the plot feels really abrupt. Like things just don't quite fit together all that well. I don't want to spoil anything, but there's a point about halfway through where Sam is testing Quincy, and the book very nearly lost me. It just felt out of place, and while it does serve a purpose in the end, I'm sure there could have been a better way to get to that same point without it feeling so weird and out of place.

Overall though, this was an engaging book. It kept me guessing from page one, and I wanted to keep reading to find out what was going to happen. None of the characters really stuck with me (apart from maybe Sam, she's by far the best written one in the bunch) but there was enough substance there to keep me interested in what was happening to them. Again, not high literature, but great as a quick popcorn thriller.

+10 task
+10 review

Post total: 20
Grand total: 305

15.8 - 1996

Bellwether - Connie Willis

+15 task

Post total: 15
Grand total: 320

15.9 - 2007

Generation Loss - Elizabeth Hand

+15 task

Post total: 15
Grand total: 335

15.10 - 2018

An American Marriage - Tayari Jones

+15 task
+50 completion
+50 different decades and years
+50 decades read in order
+50 years read in order

Post total: 215
Grand total: 550

And that's it for me!

20.10 My Comfort Zone

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

I will say I had a difficult time getting into this. I had always meant to read it, having enjoyed all of Oscar Wilde's plays and finding the concept of this book appealing. But for whatever reason, for the first half of the book or so, I just couldn't get into the characters or the storyline. The long philosophical/artistic/social digressions didn't hold my attention and I found myself debating giving up on it. However...once I got a little further, my patience was rewarded and I ended up thoroughly enjoying the second half of the book. The premise of the story is probably familiar to many of you -- the beautiful young man whose wish that his painting, rather than he himself, will age and change, comes true. The painting begins to reflect all of Dorian's sins and mistakes, and his own morality and soul become desperately stained while his outside remains pure. Thematically, it's fascinating, and for me, the second half of the book made up for the slow going of the first half.

+20 task (pub. 1890, Irish author)
+15 combo (10.9 - 222x mystery, 280x historical; 20.4 - Потрет Дориана Грея, 20.5 - focuses on the painting)
+10 oldies (1890)
+10 review

Task Total: 55
Season Total: 655

Post 874 Sam wrote: "10.1 - Square Peg

Final Girls - Riley Sager

While this definitely wasn't the best thriller I've ever read, I have to give the author credit for keeping me on my..."

This has been shelved enough as mystery/contemporary to qualify for 10.9.

Congratulations to all participants! Well done!

And now ... on to Summer!