Amber’s Comments (group member since Dec 01, 2019)

Amber’s comments from the Another World Book Club group.

And.... I'm back! : )

I read One Odd Shoe and The Fortune-Teller. I liked them both. As a bit of a feminist myself I enjoyed the gender flip of the trickster in One Odd Shoe. It was an interesting theory to why you see one shoe on the side of the road. A nice cautionary tale.

The Fortune-Teller, unfortunately for me, went over my head a bit. It made more sense when I read the author's notes. I liked the tarot idea and the deck pictures sounded pretty cool. Jamie, maybe you have more insight into that one.

The ones I read extra were Realer Than You, a neat short story you would like if you're into Japanese culture or anime. I also read Honored Guest which was another Asian culture story. It was neat and turned romantic. I also read Uncle Bob Visits, a neat story of a ghost haunting a school house. The last one I read was A Reversal of Fortune which was pretty cool and from the interesting point of view of a slave from another country.

This was a neat anthology.

Jamie have you posted anything for 2022? I hope you plan to pick more books, but if you don't I understand.

Okay, i just got the book right before I left to FL for my vacation, so haven't read it yet but i am going to.

Hey all, happy belated Thanksgiving! Mine was fabulous and I hope yours was too!

I'm sorry, but I didn't read this one. My schedule has been super crazy. Did anyone read the book?

This book wasn't what I expected, but it was very beautiful. I like the idea that there are things that happen in our lives that we can't explain and they don't need an explanation. Our memories are malleable and no two people will have the same point of view when they are remembering something. I didn't think it was spooky like some of his other works, for example Coraline or the Wolves in the Walls. I just thought it was a really great tale.

I was a bit surprised this book entailed magic too! It was quite beautiful though and full of rich imagery. I liked many of the characters too. I didn't enjoy the bouncing back and forth of the timeline. I feel the same story could have been told in a more linear fashion. This is yet another book I wouldn't have chosen myself but am glad that I read.

I like stories about magic. I read the whole Harry Potter series. I liked this book, too. An added bonus is that it was a revenge tale. I would say more but lately no one else discusses the books. So if you read this book this month and want to discuss it with you I will, but writing more right now might be a waste of my time.

I did enjoy this book. However, it moved quite slowly for me in the middle. I do like the idea that curiosity killed the cat. I believe that humanity will end up being its own downfall. I did come to like the characters, but I would have loved some closure about some of the other supporting characters, so I have some questions. I doubt anyone can answer these but here goes...

Why did the captive "mermaid" tell the others to back off? Was it saying it was the captive or the humans were its captive? Or was it just worried if those particular humans died that it couldn't/wouldn't be released?

At the end, what happed to Luis? Did he die or lose a leg? It seemed he was doing well, but his leg was injured for 2 1/2 days before help came. And what of the Dr. Toth and Mr. Blackwell. Did they get back together again? And what about the one live "mermaid"? Does it wreak havoc? Does it now side with the humans? Does it become a sideshow after research is conducted?

So many unanswered questions. Not my favorite book that we have read so far, but not horrible. What does everyone else think?

Hey all! I read this one, too! But I couldn't find this discussion thread until now for some reason. Did anyone else read it?

It was a decent book. I couldn't totally get on board with the main character, but I was intrigued enough to wonder about their backstory a little more when I got to the end of the book. I also wondered what happened next, but know I will most likely not read the next book in the series to find out. I'm still not sad I read it though.

Just got this book today and finished it today. I was intrigued right after reading the forward. I do love when someone fantasizes the life would be like if things had went differently. History is full of "what ifs". I never thought I would like a book with hippos in it so much.

Anyways, another good pick Jamie! This wasn't something I would pick up myself but am glad that I read it.

Sorry to hear your post didn't go through! I agree, she did seem quite childlike at times.

I haven't read We Have Always Lived in the Castle, but the movie wasn't that great for me. But we all know, the book is better!! LOL

I know it's still kind of early in the month and the book is long, but I really hope someone else reads it. I was very excited for this month's book and it didn't disappoint!

Stephen King is a literary giant for a reason. Honestly, even though I'm a big fan, I have been trying to read other authors and broaden my horizons, so it's been awhile since I have read one of his books. I was immediately hooked and once I started, I couldn't put it down.

I am a big fan of happy endings and triumphing over evil, so I was instantly rooting for the main character and his friends. At the beginning of the book it is easy to decide who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, but later it really does get you to thinking.

So, without giving any spoilers, I found it interesting that at some points of the book, you aren't sure who is the good guy and who is the bad. Do people who are following orders from their boss always know what is really going on? We all know how powerful it is when someone thinks they are right and get others to believe it, too. The workers at the institute do their job because they think it is right. Mrs. Sigsby knows more than the others and feels she is keeping the world in order and safe. But like with any job, there are employees who get to be sadistic and they enjoy it.

I thought this book did an excellent job of weaving the character's points of view and showing how dangerous fallacies can be. I'm not a history buff by any means, but the plot was kind of neat in that America and other countries did do studies involving telepathy, telekinesis and "remote viewing" in the past.

Jamie, I do see the similarities between the two. Both characters were also kind of loners who were excited to take a sort of unexpected journey. They had a kind of unicorns and rainbows outlook when it came to their experiences.

I truly did enjoy this book, even though it moved quite slowly. If you have read any of Shirley Jackson's books, they are a bit of a slow burn. They creep up on you and suddenly you're thinking "Oh my, is this how it's going to end?" Her style is more a creepy suspenseful, rather than outright scary horror. I highly recommend you read her short story "The Lottery". I read that in college and it still chills me to this day, because I didn't have a clue what was going on until the very end.

I do have some questions for those of you that read the book this month. Do you think Eleanor was more susceptible to the "evil" of the Hill House because she was so lonely and vulnerable? Or was it because of her strange childhood experience (stones raining on the house for days)? Or she was more susceptible because she was just plain mentally unstable? Eleanor seems a bit brow beaten, as she took care of her mother for so long and was pretty much under appreciated by both her mother and sister. I think she longed for real companionship from someone as she never got it from her family.
And I say that because she kept mentioning belonging and clung to Luke and Theodora, until they seemed to develop a liking for each other and thus, left Eleanor out. Then Eleanor only had the house as her new and exciting companion of sorts. Eleanor says at the end that Hill House is truly the only " time anything's ever happened to [her]" (pg 229).

Either way it makes me want to watch the movie now. I'm super excited to read next month's book as I am a HUGE Stephen King fan!

I am more surprised than the rest of you that I finished this book first. LOL

We had a few snow days, so I used that time to read. The first few chapters moved pretty slowly for me, but once I got far enough in it was a pretty quick read. I ended up liking it, even though it read pretty close to the plot in Throne of Glass, that we read.

You know, girl meets boy, girl hates boy, then later she loves him, and the fact that there used to be magic but now there's not due to a tyrant king who got rid of it, but that's okay because I loved the Throne of Glass series. So even though it wasn't an imaginative unique plot, I still liked the characters. I liked the fact that the book reminds you that you don't know what people have been through in their lives, so you shouldn't judge them. And that hopefully people can change for the better and make the right choices when it matters.

I think that would be a positive message in itself, but then I got to end of the book and read that the author was making parallels from her book with the BLM movement and all of the tragic things that have happened recently in our country's history.

Overall, it was a good book, but also not that unique in its storytelling. If it inspires even one person though, I'd say the book was a success.

I finished this book kind of early, too. I wanted to read as much as I could over the Christmas Break before I got busy at work.

I also enjoyed this book. This genre is a bit more to my liking. I found it interesting how the author told the story from many characters points of view rather than just one. I'm not a history buff by any means, but I did enjoy how the author used actual facts and wove them into the story.

To answer Meg's Questions:

1. I think Tamsen's daughters had to be alive when she died. Didn't she sacrifice herself basically so they could eat her?

2. I didn't get the vibe that Tamsen and her brother had an incestuous relationship, but she was obviously in love with him. And he seemed to be in love with her, as well. Their relationship seemed to be more than that of a normal brother and sister, but it seems they didn't act upon their feelings.

I haven't read any of Alma Katsu's other books, but I liked this one well enough that I wouldn't be opposed to reading more of her books.

Meg, I do agree that it was heartbreaking to hear what possessions people had to let go of in order to survive. It would be interesting to see what archaeologists would dig up. The trail was so treacherous. I looked up the Oregon Trail for more information and History.com said "According to the Oregon California Trails Association, almost one in ten who embarked on the trail didn’t survive."

That is a scary fact, right there. In the short video on their website they also said there were about 10 graves for every mile, and the trail was 2,000+ miles long! The Hasting's "shortcut" that the Donner party took, actually added a month to their schedule. It really was very tragic.

All in all, I liked the book and it sparked an interest in me to learn more about the history of the Oregon Trail and the ill-fated Donner party.

Yes, that part is hard to finish. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks so.

Okay, so I'm a failure at book clubbing right now. I read more than half of The House on the Borderland but was unable to finish it. I know work shouldn't be an excuse but I am swamped at work. I am teaching in school, in a mask, and virtually with quarantined students simultaneously. My days are long and when I get home I sleep. So I am making it a goal to try and do better. Maybe I can get some reading done over Christmas Break?

Anyways, my thoughts on The House on the Borderland is that is started out intriguing with the strange house and weird pale pig things, but then I lost interest when reading about the end of the world and the days being shorter and the sun dying. It just got real drawn out and slow.

Did anyone read this book? I didn't see any other posts in this thread besides Jamie's.

Hello Peter! I'm so glad we have another member of our club!

Ok ladies, I finished this book earlier this week. I have to say, I loved that it was a pretty light read. It was quirky and funny. You could tell that he wrote this for children to read. Alice goes to a dream land where she is curious and learns things and also gets to show her knowledge. Mostly when she is talking or thinking to herself. When Alice is small she gets pushed around, but when she is big she doesn't. It seems like as she is dreaming she is going on a journey from a child to an adult. She rescues a baby, she helps people, and she goes to court. And when she wakes up at the end of the book, she goes back to being a carefree child and her sister wistfully admires Alice's imagination.

I do agree that Alice had to recite a lot of things and remember them during the story. However, I have to remind myself that that is what school was like back then. Rote memorization was the preferred teaching/learning method.

I don't know if either of you have seen the Disney animated movie of Alice in Wonderland, but as I read I really felt that they did this book justice. So many of the things that happened to Alice in the book were also in the movie, just not always in the same order! I was surprised how close it was. Unfortunately I didn't get to read the second part (Through the Looking Glass) but I skimmed through and Tweedledee and Tweedledum in the illustrations looked almost exactly like they did in the Disney movie. So, it looked like to me that Disney put those two books together in one film.

Okay, yeah. I just finished the book today and it seemed like we had way to many pages to tell that story. It was quite sexiest at times, but that seems like it matched the era it was written in. I suppose if I was into romance stories, I may have appreciated it a bit more. Conan was the big, strong man who saved the day and the woman and so therefore he gets her in the end.

I have to say that it was overall pretty weird and I don't have any desire to read anymore Robert E. Howard. I am glad that I am trying new types of reading though; it's nice to get outside my comfort zone and try new things. That's why I joined this book club.

I saw a movie about Red Sonja that was made in the 90's, I think. And Arnold Schwarzenegger was in it.