Reading with Style discussion
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WI 22-23 Completed Tasks
Sample Post for Alpha Omega15.6 Alpha Omega
The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill
+15 Task (C-L)
Task Total=15
Season Total=515 (assumes midseason with a previous total of 500)
15.1 AOTwo Boys Kissing by David Levithan 780 Lexile (carryover book, read 51% of it today)
+15 Task (D-N)
Task total: 15
Season total: 15
15.1 Alpha OmegaThey Shoot Horses, Don't They? by Horace McCoy
+15 task (H-Y)
Task total: 15
Season total: 15
15.3 AOBookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature by Zibby Owens
+15 Task (Z-S)
Task total: 15
Season total: 45
15.2 Alpha OmegaA Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers
+15 Task (B-S)
Task Total=15
Season Total=30
15.4 AOService Included: Four-Star Secrets of an Eavesdropping Waiter by Phoebe Damrosch
+15 Task (P-H)
Task total: 15
Season total: 60
20.3 NYRBSlow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A. by Eve Babitz
I loved this book. I loved the narrator for the audiobook. Eve Babitz is just a great writer and I wanted to hear all of her gossipy moments and peer into her glamorous life. So much fun.
The essays range from descriptions of men that she was interested in, or sort of interested in, or were interested in her, to descriptions of friendships with famous and less-famous people. She describes a Los Angeles that dreams are made of--stars and near-stars fretting over scripts, glamorous people doing a lot of drugs and having a lot of sex, everyone living in the moment and randomly taking off for weekends at vineyards or fancy suburbs.
I've never read anything else by this author, but I mean to change that after reading these essays.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+10 Aged (1943-2021)
Task total: 40
Grand total: 40
10.2 PronounsI Remember Nothing: and Other Reflections by Nora Ephron
My bookclub read this about 8 years ago and I missed the meeting and never finished the book even though it's really short. I left it sitting on my unfinished list always thinking perhaps I'd get back to it. And I think now I'm approaching the right age for this book. While I'm not as old as Ephron was when she published this, I've reached an age where I'm out of patience with men's expectations and no longer an object of random male gaze anyway. I've reached an age where my body is failing me in unexpected and unwanted ways. But also an age where maybe I've gained just a touch of wisdom, a bit of earned whimsy perhaps.
In any event, I very much enjoyed these reflections from a great writer. Hearing the author read her own writing was excellent. I highly recommend this in audio form.
+10 Task ("I")
+10 Review
Task total: 20
Grand total: 75
20.4 Southeast AsiaAunty Lee's Chilled Revenge by Ovidia Yu
This is the third instalment in the Aunty Lee mystery series. I always enjoy Aunty Lee mysteries. They are set in Singapore, and have a real sense of place. As you read them you get to learn a little about Singapore, and a lot about the food. This was a complicated mystery, involving very contemporary issues such as animal rights and cyber-bullying. It wasn’t until about 2/3 of the way through that I had my suspicions about one of the characters, although in the end they weren’t the killer. One of the characters verged on the edge of caricature, but I suspect Yu created an amalgam of bad tourists she has observed. 4*
20 task
10 review
10 combo 20.7, 20.10
_____
40
Running total: 40
10.4 TwelveBag Man: The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover-Up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House by Rachel Maddow
This is the story of VP Spiro Agnew’s behavior and the investigation that brought about his resignation. It is also the history of the Office of Legal Council’s memo that has become the Department of Justice’s stance that a sitting US Vice President can be indicted but a sitting President cannot. The book includes information that has come to light since the 70’s.
While alarming to see how messy things were after Watergate, it is comforting to see how the rule of law up-held by dedicated civil servants saved the country.
This is told in typical Maddow voice—“can you believe this?” And with lessons we can take away for the present.
+10 task
+5 combo 20.2
+10 review
Task total: 25
Season total: 25
20.7 RatingsUntil Foreverby Sade Rena
650 ratings as of 11/30/22
Task +20
Combo +5 10.4 Twelve(12 or less letters)
Task +25
Grand Total: 25
10.1 SeriesDressed for Death by Donna Leon
Installment #3 of Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti series. This series is a wonderful meeting of descriptions of Venice and Venetians, a warm family, a wise woman, a little humor and a grim investigation by a good police team. This story has a theme about not making assumptions based on prejudices both negative and positive. I enjoyed this book and the narrator does a good job.
+10 task
+10 combo 10.3, 20.10
+10 review
+10 aged
Task total: 40
Season total: 65
15.5 AODear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence and Grief by Victoria Chang
+15 Task, V-G
Task total: 15
Season total: 75
20.10 Mystery The Hunting Wives by May Cobb
+20 task
+5 (combo) (10.8 The Threes)
Task total: 25
Season total: 25
10.4Earthlings by Sayaka Murata
Hahahaha! I don’t know what I was expecting from this book, but it wasn’t THAT!
I was in a very deep reading slump when I picked this up. I truly expected this to languish on my “currently reading” list for weeks… but had I started this earlier in the day it would have been a single sitting read.
I could not put this down. It’s SO STRANGE. But so interesting. For most of the book I wondered where it was going… was this about mental illness? Trauma-bonding and extreme coping mechanisms? Magical realism? Sci-fi? It was recommended to me as a horror book, but that does not emerge until the end. And what an ending!
I loved this book - the narrative voice, the approach it takes with disturbing subjects… very worth reading.
+10 task
10 review
Task total = 20
Season total = 20
10.8The Exorcist's House by Nick Roberts
Sigh. I was really looking forward to this one, and it was NOT for me.
It was cute that the titular Excorcist was named Blatty, and that the family was named Hill - nods to the classics. Unfortunately, this book does not have its own flavor… it’s so predictable with such flat stock characters that I cannot recommend it. I know I’m in the minority there though.
I don’t necessarily need freshness or innovation to enjoy a book though. I just need writing that flows… and this did not. It was a very staccato read. Short sentences, with details that still failed to set a mood. I could not vibe with the style at all and the book became very grating.
Even the ending did not land with me, because you need to care about the characters and ugh. I did not.
Most readers seem to really connect with this one… just very much not my thing.
+10 task
+10 review
Task total = 20
Season total = 40
10.9 Covid 19 HitsMalibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid
It's 1983, and model Nina Riva is planning her annual party at her lovely oceanfront home. Her brother is a top-class surfer, her half-brother a successful photographer, and their father is a jetsetting rock singer. But all of this hides a difficult past when the children and their mother were abandoned by Mick Riva and left to struggle to survive on the proceeds of a beachside fish restaurant. Tonight's party threatens to expose some of the cracks in their perfect-seeming lives.
This made an entertaining audiobook, although it didn't have much substance. I loved Daisy Jones & The Six so much, I wasn't expecting this to be so conventional, but I will still look forward to the author's other books.
+10 Task (Historical Fiction 2021)
+10 Review
+10 combo (10.4, 20.7)
Task total = 30
Season Total = 30
20.1 BirthdaysMiss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West
Miss Lonelyhearts is the only name we are given for the main character of this novella, although he is a man. His job is to write the agony column for a New York newspaper, and it depresses him more and more to read all the letters from desperate people that he cannot help in any meaningful way.
It's darkly humorous, with emphasis on the “darkly”. I would not recommend Nathanael West for anybody who wants a nice cosy or uplifting read.
It left me feeling that there were layers I might have missed, so I will keep it for a possible re-read.
+20 Task (1933)
+10 Review
+10 Canon
Task total = 40
Season Total = 85
20.6 IndustryThe Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
The Day of the Locust focuses on the lower classes of the Hollywood film industry - the extras, the scene painters, the singers and dancers who are barely scraping by.
The main character Tod Hackett was a rising star in art college, and he's now designing scenery and living in a down-at-heel boarding house. Living in the same boarding house are Faye Greener, an aspiring starlet who never seems to get a break, and her father, with a lifetime's experience of small-town theatres to draw on. There's also Homer Simpson, a shy bookkeeper who's in love with Faye (and whose name was later plucked to grace a well-known cartoon character – but that was nothing to do with Nathanael West).
All their lives collide in ways that are increasingly worrying for any reader who might be hoping for a happy ending.
+20 Task
+10 Review
+ 5 Combo (20.1 1939)
+10 Canon
Task total = 45
Season Total = 130
20.7 RatingsThe Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Lexile 1180
There are some good stories in this collection, although I was underwhelmed by the last one, which has the fateful meeting of Holmes and Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. I must have seen a dramatisation of this at some time, because I had a clear picture in my mind of a thrilling struggle between the two of them on the edge of the waterfall, but in this original story Watson misses the whole thing, and since it’s all from his point of view, there's no way to know what happened.
Of the other stories, I particularly enjoyed the sweet ‘Adventure of the Yellow Face’ and ‘The Musgrave Ritual’. The latter is formulaic in plot, but I appreciated the characters and the way things turned out between them.
+20 Task (over 90K)
+10 Review
+10 Combo (20.8, 20.10)
Task total = 40
Season Total = 170
20.7 RatingsWhite Noise by Don DeLillo
Jack Gladney is chairman of the department of Hitler Studies at a small-town college, a department he invented solely in order to establish himself and the college on the national stage, at which it has been entirely successful. (He’s not a Nazi, just studies them.) His wife appears to be a comfortable, happy homemaker but is secretly taking some kind of drug. They both have multiple previous marriages, most of which have produced at least one child. Then an “airborne toxic event” (a cloud of poisonous gas) is accidentally released near their town, and their low-level anxiety escalates into something that threatens to derail them completely.
White Noise is absurd in a way that made me laugh out loud several times. I imagine not everybody will like this book, but for me it was a joy to read a "weighty" novel that cannot be taken seriously.
I saw by chance that a movie of this has just been released – I had no idea while I was reading the book. Maybe I will try to see it.
+20 Task (over 90K)
+10 Review
+ 5 Combo (10.4)
+10 Aged (born 1936, still living)
Task total = 45
Season Total = 215
10.2 PronounsThey Went Left by Monica Hesse
730L
+10 Task
+5 Combo (10.4 - 12 letters in title)
Post Total: 15
Season Total: 15
20.7 RatingsOne Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
692,853 ratings
+20 Task
Post Total: 20
Season Total: 35
20.8 Short (Connie's Task)Rebellious Daughters edited by Maria Katsonis & Lee Kofman
+20 Task
+5 Combo (20.7 - 97 ratings)
Post Total: 25
Season Total: 60
10.8 The Threes (Rosemary's Task)The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katharine Green
+10 Task
+5 Combo (20.10 - MPG Mystery)
+10 Aged (1846-1935)
Post Total: 25
Season Total: 100
10.4 TwelveThe Playmaker by Thomas Keneally
12 letters in title
+10 Task
+5 Combo (20.7 - 414 ratings)
+10 Aged (born 1935)
Post Total: 25
Season Total: 125
15.4 Alpha OmegaLovers in the Age of Indifference by Xiaolu Guo
+15 Task (X-O)
Task Total=15
Season Total=60
20.10 Mystery (Elizabeth (Alaska)'s Task)The Watchmaker's Daughter (Glass and Steele #1) by C.J. Archer
+20 Task
+5 Combo (10.8)
Post Total: 25
Season Total: 150
10.1 Series L'Arabe du futur 5 : Une jeunesse au Moyen-Orient, 1992-1994 by Riad Sattouf
+10 Task
No style, graphic novel
Task total = 5
Points total = 10
20.10 Mystery Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
+20 Task
+20 Combo (10.4 ; 10.7 - mostly set in an 'infinite house' where an ocean is imprisoned ; 10.9 - Fantasy, 2020 ; 20.7 - 182k ratings)
Task total = 40
Points total = 50
20.2 Biography?Hedy Lamarr: An Incredible Life by William Roy
Task total = 20
No style points, graphic novel
Points total = 70
Task 20.10 Mystery (Elizabeth (Alaska)'s Task)Read any book with an MPG of mystery.
Open Season (Joe Pickett #1) (2001) by C.J. Box
Review: Open Season is the first book in a 20+ book series starring Joe Pickett, a Wyoming Game Warden. I really liked Joe Pickett – he’s a ‘straight arrow’, enforcing the Game laws (because it’s the right thing to do!), immune to taking bribes (because taking bribes is wrong!), and is a loving and loyal husband and father. He’s not perfect – a bit too trusting in other people’s goodness, a bit too naïve about how situations would resolve – but, as a reader, I enjoyed reading about a character who was not snarky or manipulative or who cuts corners. The mystery made sense, and its resolution was reasonable. I’d include a ‘trigger warning’ but doing so involves a major spoiler, so I’ll just say that (view spoiler).
According to goodreads, this novel has won the following awards (deservedly so):
Barry Award for Best First Novel (2002)
Macavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel (2002)
Anthony Award for Best First Novel (2002)
Gumshoe Award for Best First Novel (2002)
Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best First Mystery Novel (1)
Edgar Award Nominee for Best First Novel (2002)
Recommended for mystery readers.
+20 Task
+05 Combo (#10.4 (10 letters in title))
+10 Review
Task Total: 20 + 05 + 10 = 35
Grand Total: 00 + 35 = 35
15.1 Alpha OmegaBlood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West by Hampton Sides
+15 Task (H-S)
(First post)
15.4 Alpha OmegaThe Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality by Chris C. Mooney
+15 pts - Task (C - Y)
Season Total - 60 pts
20.7 RatingsBeautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren
I honestly have no idea why I decided to read this book. It's not a good book. The characters are flat and sort of silly. The start of the book and most of the relationship described is either ridiculously unbelievable or kind of gross (especially the first scene in the book that supposedly starts these characters down a romance path).
But all that said, I couldn't look away even though this is one of the most ridiculous books I've read (and I do read some trashy erotica novels on occasion). I wanted to see the end of this book. So I guess the authors captured my attention despite myself.
I can't really recommend this book, but I'd be willing to give this author pair another chance because clearly there was enough here to make me want to finish the book.
+20 Task (190,000+ ratings)
+10 Review
Task total: 30
Grand total: 105
15.1 Alpha OmegaHickory Dickory Dock by Agatha Christie
+15 Task (A -- E)
Task Total= 15
Season Total= 15
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Reading with Style
Books mentioned in this topic
The Book Eaters (other topics)Voices (other topics)
Site Fidelity: Stories (other topics)
The Maid (other topics)
The Door (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Sunyi Dean (other topics)David Elliott (other topics)
Claire Boyles (other topics)
Nita Prose (other topics)
Magda Szabó (other topics)
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Please use the add book/author link for the book titles. When claiming combo points, tell how the book qualifies, and provide a link if requested in the task description.
If using an outside source to qualify a book for points or combo, please be sure to post in the appropriate task thread prior to posting in this thread.
Sample Post
20.7 Ratings
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
100+ word review
+20 Task (300k + ratings)
+10 Review
+ 5 combo (10.4)
+10 Canon
+10 Aged (1828-1910)
+25 Jumbo (1392 pgs)
Task total = 80
Season Total=150 (assumes midseason with a previous score of 70)