Karen’s Comments (group member since Dec 01, 2021)

Karen’s comments from the Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge group.

Khalisti wrote: "Would you consider a book about Katherine of Aragon or Anne Boleyn? They each had one surviving child, but delt with multiple miscarriages."

I think so - as this was their defining life problem. Another royal history nonfiction work that may apply is Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power by Leah Redmond Chang - the opening sequence details Catherine de Medici's ten year period of difficulties in producing an heir for the French throne.

Frances and Bernard by Carlene Bauer is described as an epistolary novel loosely based on the correspondence between Flannery O'Connor and Robert Lowell.

Meme wrote: "Hello,
I would like your opinion:
Is Ultramarine would work for underwater civilisation?

Ultramarine does NOT work for that prompt - something happens, but not that. Very good book, works for short book prompt?

Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl by Jonathan C. Slaght - one I've had on kindle for awhile.

Big Girl, Small Town by Michelle Gallen fits this prompt - Set in a Northern Irish (which side of border?) chip shop and about the daily life of the local girl who works there, I gave it 5 stars - really enjoyed the voice and construction.

Leo:
The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII, 1878-1903: Or a Light in the Heavens

The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Virgo:
The Virgin in the Garden by A.S. Byatt

Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary by Marina Warner

Virgin Soil by Ivan Turgenev

The Virgin and the Gypsy by D.H. Lawrence

Scorpio:
Rain of Scorpions and Other Stories by Estela Portillo Trambley

Business: Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America by Marcia Chatelain - Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History (2021)

Mathematics: Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife

String, Straightedge, and Shadow: The Story of Geometry by Julia E. Diggins - I OWN a copy of this children's classic.

Tofu/Veganism: This Can't Be Tofu!: 75 Recipes to Cook Something You Never Thought You Would--and Love Every Bite by Deborah Madison

East: 120 Vegan and Vegetarian Recipes from Bangalore to Beijing by Meera Sodha

Simone de Beauvoir -

The Mandarins or Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter

and Jean-Paul Sartre - Nausea or No Exit and Three Other Plays

The Mandarins and Nausea are part of the Boxall 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list - if you are working on that.

Looking through the Carol Shields Prize Longlist and I found this Michigan author, currently a professor at Wayne State in Detroit: V. Efua Prince - her longlisted book is Kin: Practically True Stories - which is I understand, short stories in conversation with the Jean Toomer classic Cane.

Laura Ruth wrote: "The Canterville Ghost looks like exactly what I wanted: a ghost getting increasingly annoyed that the new arrivals don't believe in him. It's very short, and it's Oscar Wilde. Yay!"
Oh, my library has this in a Lisbeth Zwerger illustrated edition - thanks.

I'm obsessed with this older reading guide - 500 Great Books by Women - and found a fruit-picking title - Fruit Fields in My Blood: Okie Migrants in the West by Toby Sonneman. Also, works for "Fruit" prompt.

And I have this gorgeous children's picture book: Gathering the Sun: An Alphabet In Spanish And English by Alma Flor Ada

Mining my Rock and roll Goodreads bookshelf for this one and I found:

A Thousand Threads by Neneh Cherry - this was shortlisted for the Womens Prize for Nonfiction in 2025. - Also, works for "Pop star" prompt.

Robert Plant: A Life by Paul Rees - Also, works for "Pop star" prompt.

Groupie by Jenny Fabian

Bending this one entirely to suit myself - When I was young in the sixties/seventies of the last century -- the influencers who reached me were singers/songwriters/pop stars, Some of these were women and some were models/hangers-on/groupies associated with the men.

So... one old and one current title in that vein:

Groupie by Jenny Fabian - also, fits "Curly hair" prompt.

Taylor Swift by the Book: The Literature Behind the Lyrics, from Fairy Tales to Tortured Poets by Rachel Feder - also, fits "Pop Star" prompt.

Stretching category -- Piglet by Lottie Hazell - MC has had a varied weight. Great book!

Heavy by Kiese Laymon

Milk Fed by Melissa Broder - on my TBR forever - Second main character described as "zaftig".

It does not say "human" civilization - I have a copy of Pod by Laline Paull and I am trying to read what I have at home or can get from my local library - so there.

I am old and these are old books - both are also, in the form of a long-distance correspondence over time so fit the book in Letters prompt.

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff - a reader and a bookseller

By This Wing by Celia Thaxter - the island in Maine gardener to a Boston ornithologist.

Married/Spouses:

Danzy Senna - Colored Television

Percival Everett - James or Erasure

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Nicola Griffith - Hild and many others

Kelley Eskridge - Solitaire: A Novel

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I am going with these Italian writers:

Elsa Morante - Lies and Sorcery

Alberto Moravia - Contempt

Alison Bechdel - Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama -- includes a mini history of psychology and psychoanalysis - rich and deep.

and her recent The Secret to Superhuman Strength - which I am assured by other readers here includes Pilates for that other prompt.

I also have hopes for :

I Love Led Zeppelin by Ellen Forney

The One Hundred Nights of Hero by Isabel Greenberg

Warlight by Michael Ondaatje fits and is fantastic.

The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel - hope it mentions something close enough.