Kathleen (itpdx)’s Comments (group member since Jul 13, 2011)

Kathleen (itpdx)’s comments from the Reading with Style group.

10.6 Ninetieth

The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride by Daniel James Brown

Compelling, unforgettable.
Brown gives us the story of one young woman, Sarah Graves, who became part of the Donner party that was stranded in the Sierras in the winter of 1847. He writes with feeling and compassion for their decisions and experiences.
Brown fills us in on the history--what the US and California were like in 1847. And what we now know about the toll that their experiences took on their bodies and minds-snow blindness, starvation, hypothermia and trauma.
My daughter recommended this book to me and she still thinks about it years after she read it.
Daniel James Brown also wrote The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Those readers who have read that book will know what excellent writing Brown does.
I listened to the audio book narrated by Michael Prichard who does a very good job.

+10 task (first published 2009)
+10 review

Task total: 20
Season total: 460

20.3 Debut Novel

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

This is a soap-opera told in an interesting form. It is set around a cooking class series that happens once a week in the kitchen of a up-scale restaurant. All of the participants join the class in search of something and many of them are unsure what that something is. The reader learns about the students and some cooking tips along the way.
I thought at first that some of the similes were jarring like "their cream sauces filled with small, disconcerting pockets of flour, like bills in your mailbox when you had hoped for a love letter". But they smoothed out. It is Bauermeister's first novel and I'll guess that she improves in later books.
This is a sweet, positive story.

+20 task
+10 female
+10 review
+5 combo 10.5 food MPG
+5 combo 10.6 first published 2009
+5 combo "she went to the refrigerator and pulled out a hard piece of Parmesan cheese"

Task total: 55
Season total: 440

20.7 500 Great Books By Women

Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places by Ursula K. Le Guin

Review: This is a series of essays by Ursula LeGuin with a feminist tilt.
My favorite was the essay in which LeGuin takes apart the insistence that women have to choose between be mothers or writing. They can’t possibly do both whereas men can because they have a woman to take care of the children while they write!
LeGuin has a wonderful sense of humor.
But I found most of the book reviews at the end of the book a slog to read.

+20 task
+10 female
+10 review
+5 combo 10.1
Task total: 45

Season total: 385

What determines whether a book is a memoir? I read Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places by Ursula K. Le Guin
My library has it shelved as essays but I notice that one of MPG is memoir.

20.5 Elizabeth’s Comfort Zone

A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Lucy Bird

Isabella Bird, an English woman traveling alone, visited the Colorado Rockies in 1873. This book is a collection of letters written home to her sister. Bird vividly describes the beauty of the mountains. She describes the people living there-the pioneers, the ranchers, the miners, and the Utes at a time when the area is moving from frontier to “civilization”.
The narrator for this audio book, Clare Wille, is outstanding. She brings Bell’s words to life—the joy, wonder, disgust, impatience, weariness, wariness, anxiety, persistence. Clare Wille makes Bird’s descriptions sing.
I had attempted to read this book before in print and had given up. I highly recommend Wille’s interpretation.

+20 task
+10 female
+10 review
+5 combo 20.6
+5 combo 20.7
Task total: 50
Season total: 340

20.4 Uncommon Letter
The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages by François-Xavier Fauvelle

very interesting book, organized in a different way. Fauvelle tells a history of Africa in the Middle Ages. The book is somewhat chronological but each chapter is about a place or person. It includes information from surviving texts or maps as well as what has been learned (or not) from haphazard or more meticulous archeological digs. The information is fascinating and Fauvelle is a good story teller.
I would have liked more maps. The book has two—one from the eighth to thirteenth centuries and one from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. I would have liked one with an overlay of the current political boundaries.
I am looking forward to finding out more from recent archeological work.

+20 task
+10 review
+5 combo 10.1
+5 prize Prix des Rendez-vous de l'histoire de Blois
Task total: 40
Season total: 290

Thank you

Will The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages by François-Xavier Fauvelle count. I am not sure how to interpret what the “including hyphenated” means.

20.1 Happy Birthday Elizabeth

38 Nooses: Lincoln, Little Crow, and the Beginning of the Frontier's End by Scott W. Berg

I read this book after reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Leadership: In Turbulent Times. Goodwin focuses on Lincoln’s decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation and bring his cabinet to support it.
This book, at first glance, seems to be about a failure on Lincoln’s part, when he signed off on the largest mass execution in U.S. history during the same period.
The author, Scott Berg, does an excellent job of telling the story of the Minnesota Dakota War. He focuses on individuals, victims, witnesses, military and religious leaders as well as what is happening in Lincoln’s White House and the political pressures. Berg brings in Native American voices from oral tradition with a clear explanation of the sources (who is sharing the information and their connection to the events, when the information was written down, what language was spoken).
Berg keeps the reader turning the pages.

+20 task
+10 Review
+5 combo 10.1
Task total: 35
Season total: 250

Rosemary wrote: "It's the halfway point of the season. How is everyone doing? On track? Off track? Never had a track? ;)"

I am trying to figure out how come I am reading 4 books at once! That is very unlike me!

10.3 1925 Movies

An Enemy in the Village by Martin Walker

Chief of Police Bruno discovers a car parked with the body of a woman in the driver’s seat, an apparent suicide. Eventually after the body is removed and the vehicle is examined, a young gendarm drives the car to St. Denis. Thus begins a new Bruno mystery.
This is the first Bruno book that I have listened to that was not read by Ian MacKenzie. The narrator is Peter Noble. That took some adjustment on my part. Noble does a better job of the women’s voices and the Scottish accents but I am not sure he is a better narrator in my opinion.
One passage is told from the POV of Balzac, Bruno’s basset hound. That is the first time I remember that being done.
And Florence has almost disappeared from the story as Bruno launches a new romance.
I sort of feel that Walker has backed himself into a couple of narrative corners that this book is trying to extract him from.

+10 set 100% in France
+5 combo lots of cheese including “He enjoyed both cheeses with pleasure”
+10 review
Total: 25
Season total: 210

I read somewhere about regional American accents and found out that I have a northwestern accent because I say cot and caught the same.
My mom grew up in Minnesota and I remember her asking how to say “creek”. Creek or crick?
I remember having to translate between a Boston waiter and a Southern man trying to order Yankee pot roast!
I think it is sad that we have lost most of our regional accents.

10.4 Fall Birthdays

Repentance by Eloísa Díaz

I decided to read this book in my quest to understand Argentina. It tells the story of policeman Alzada in two time periods—1980 and 2001. It is a peek at a middle class family in Buenas Aires during times of protest and turbulence. The reader sees the political balancing act that the police have to navigate to follow the commands of their superiors, to respond to crimes among the wealthy and to catch other criminals. And we see how careful the middle class has to be to survive.
I understand that the author wrote the book in English even though it isn’t her first language. I find that there is a very nuanced difference in her use of language that adds a delightful flavor to the book.

+10 task
+10 review
+10 female
Task total: 30

Season total: 185

20.10 Fall Vacation

What You Are Looking For Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama

The only word I can think of for this book is “sweet”. People who are at loose ends in their lives and have no self-esteem find their way to the local library. The reference librarian hands out book recommendations and felt pieces. The ideas from the books and family, friends, and acquaintances help the people turn a corner and see life from a different angle and things look better. There is too much expressed self-examination for my taste.

+20 set in Japan and a Japanese author
+10 female
+5 combo 20.6
+5 combo 20.8 MPG magical realism
+5 combo 10.4 AM
+5 combo 10.8 library
+10 review
Task total: 60

Season total: 155

I can’t quite figure out my score.
I have two posts post 166 For 50. Joanna found +5 for a prize I missed
And post 183 for 40.
I come up with
+50
+5
+40
For a total of 95 rather than 80.

20.2 War Babies

Leadership: In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin b. 1943

Goodwin tells us the stories of four presidents who showed good leadership—Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR and LBJ. She describes their childhood—poverty, privilege, and in between, their education—very little (mostly self taught), public education including a state teachers’ college to tudors and elite institutions. Goodwin takes us through the crises that she thinks helped form them-deaths of parents and loved ones, ill health, and depression. Two of them stepped into office from the vice presidency when their predecessor was killed.
Teddy Roosevelt’s handling of the coal strike was the crisis that I was least familiar with. Goodwin lays out the challenge facing the president clearly and how Roosvelt decided to intervene as the representative of the people who were facing a winter without heat in a time when the government didn’t have a role in labor disputes.
There is plenty of food for thought here.

+20 task
+10 female
+10 review
Task total: 40
Season total: 90

I would like to add a lock for one of our group reads A Town with Half the Lights On by Page Getz

20.8 A Touch of Magic

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

This book has an interesting premise—a young woman makes a deal with a dark god for her freedom from an unwanted marriage and the small village she grew up in. She finds that what it means is that no one remembers her, not even her family, she can leave no mark on the world and that she will not die. So she moves through the world for 300 years, lonely, and resisting the god she made the deal with.
The author does a wonderful job describing forests, storms, elegant restaurants, warm beds and daily lives. I listened to the audiobook. The reader does a good job.

+20 task
+10 female author
+5 combo 20.6
+5 combo 10.9 her father’s bread and cheese to fill her belly
+10 review
Task total: 50
Season total: 50

I would like to lock in No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain by Rebecca Solnit
It was published in May and the number of ratings will probably climb.

Good to see you back, Ed.