July Book Challenge

 

1.      A book set in the place where you live ~

女二 (Female Supporting Role)

Author: Joyoon Deng

Genre: fiction

Number of pages: 461

First published: 2023

Setting: Taipei

Rating: 2 stars

First sentence: She was barefoot, stepping into her sister’s cloth shoes.

One sentence comment: This is a book full of dialogues, a bit like a play.

 

I seldom read novels written by Taiwanese writers because I don’t relate much to the characters. However, this book was recommended in a philosophical professor’s video, and it got a Taipei Prize last year.

It’s about a young woman’s acting life and her psychology. The reason she wants to be an actor is that she doesn’t need to act the role of herself. She wants to conquer something. I like the idea that after one gets mature, one can be great without depending on dreams.

 

2. A book set in a different world

Revival

Author: Stephen King

Genre: Horror

Number of pages: 466

First published: 2012

Setting: US

Rating: 4 stars

First sentence: In one way, at least, our lives really are like movies.

One sentence comment: I love the first two chapters, which are so vivid that I was brought in the methodist community in the sixties US, and felt similar heart-broken like the characters in the book had felt.

 I started the book in latter June. It was written by King in his mid seventies. The major theme is death and faith, which, I believe, he had personally experienced in his near fatal car accident and aftermath in previous years. King is a master in writing an antihero, especially the pivot of his change. The antihero in the book is most interesting. His surname, Jacobs, is the mixture of job and Jacob from the bible. The former was stripped of everything he loved in life, but the latter was determined to fight with an angle to get up a ladder to heaven. Curiously he also used his middle name Dan, which I think is from Dan Brown, the latest powerful antichrist writer.

 I adore this book either for its theme or characters. However, the weakness of the book is the portion of the narrator‘s band career and love life, which felt like superfluous add-on. Therfore, I only give it four stars.

 

3. A book by an author from a country different than your own

Sense and Sensibility

Author: Jane Austen

Genre: fiction

Number of pages: 353

First published: 1811

Setting: Sussex, Devenshire and London, UK

Rating: 3 stars

First sentence: The family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex.

One sentence comment: The story is bland because I was affected by none of the characters.

 

This is the last of the Austen’s six novels that I read. I realized why the film of 1995 directed by Ang Lee was considered excellent because the actors made the characters’  feelings effective. Again it is a story of love constrained by financial situations but Marianne was surprisingly immature considering how they were forced to move out with her father’s death.

 

In my opinion, the theme of the book is Gossip. People who care about the two heroines, Elinor and Marianne, pass gossip for the benefit of finding husbands for them. However, Elinor and Marianne seem to be quite obnoxious, criticizing other people for their lack of taste or vulgar remarks. If these people don't exist, the sisters’ good taste of music or art can't be known for the purpose of either love or marriage. If they don't care for gossips, why are they eager to be informed of Willoughby's fortune and character from those who gossip? Actually the society they sit in is fed by gossip, but they act as if they are better than their companions. I think the two sisters are the most unpleasant characters in Austen's novels.

 4. A book with a place in the title

Murder on Bank Street (Gaslight Mystery #10)

Author: Victoria Thompson

Genre: historical mystery

Number of pages: 326

First published: 2008

Setting: New York City

Rating: 2 stars

First sentence: Danny didn’t like lying to the Doc.

One sentence comment: It becomes the easiest thing to continue this mystery series for everything that happens there seems so familiar to me.

 This book seems repetitive to me since many events happened then were talked by different characters. The readers have to read the same events a few times. The plot is most absurd. I think this is the worst book in the series so far. Had I not already bought a few later books, I may stop here.

 

5. A book with a landscape on the cover

Circle of Friends

Author: Maeve Binchy

Genre: fiction

Number of pages: 722

First published: 1990

Setting: Ireland

Rating: 4 stars

First sentence: The kitchen was full of the smells of baking.

One sentence comment: It’s disappointing that there isn’t a mature female leading role as in the author’s previous books.

 

The story revolves around three 20 year old girls. Everyone has to cope with their drawbacks and yearnings. It’s a great story but not as great as the author’s earlier novels. Still, I enjoy reading a devious young woman in formation.

 

November Book Challenges

 

Nov # a book published before 1900

Lady Susan

Author: Jane Austen

Genre: epistolary

Page number: 58

First published: 1871

Setting: England in Regency era

Rating: 2 stars

First sentence: My dear brother – I can no longer refuse myself the pleasure of profiting by your kind invitation when we last parted of spending some weeks with you at Churchill, and, therefore, if quite convenient to you and Mrs Vernon to receive me at present, I shall hope within a few days to be introduced to a sister whom I have so long desired to be acquainted with.

One sentence comment: It feels odd to read an epistolary novel full of calculation for marriages written by a young lady under 20.

          It means that Austen never believed in love. A romantic person became realistic because she experiences hardship in life as she grows older. But if Austen saw through the mask of marriages as a teen, how could she write romantic novels in later years? I start to think that Austen had known that marriages are business from the very beginning.

 

Nov # a book with a reading word in the title

Mayhem at the Orient Express ( A League of Literary Ladies Mystery #1)

Author: Kylie Logan

Genre: cozy mystery

Page number:282

First published: 2013

Setting: An island off Ohio at present time

Rating: 2 stars

First sentence: If it weren’t for Jerry Garcia peeing on my pansies, I never would have joined the League of Literary Ladies.

One sentence comment: It's most  disappointing that the author came up with the idea of a book club in a mystery, but had no merit of book discussion.

 

In terms of character building, dialogs, and plot development, this book achieves nothing. From the very beginning, since the three women protagonists appeared, which seemed to signal a possibly interesting mystery, they quarreled up to 50 pages before the murder happened. You would think things could have taken a good turn, but their conflict went on while the author were introducing more flat characters and boring conversation. I didn't give up the book simply because I wanted to find out the solution. Then I can sum up my experience, that is never trust a mystery series if its first book is published after 2010.

 

 

Nov # a book included on Goodread’s 1000 books to read before you die

The Awakening

Author: Kate Chopin

Genre: fiction

Page number: 113

First published: 1892

Setting: Louisiana, USA in the late 19^th century

Rating: 4 stars

First sentence: A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: ‘Allez ous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That’s all right!’

One sentence comment: Told like a slow paced romance, this book, however, activates my investigating mind, eager to find out the outcome.

 

It’s a languid story about Mrs Edna Pontellier, a 21 year-old woman with children, supplied a comfortable life by her husband. She is involved with two men, Robert and Arobin, one she loves and the other she is pursued by. The courting in this book is peculiar and almost unrealistic for a modern reader, like me; however, over a hundred years apart, I get a chance to savor the writing about the powerlessness of a young woman. When she decided that she ‘no longer one of Mr Pontellier’s possessions to dispose of or not,’ I guess it is why the book was banned.

 

Nov # a book you would consider to be light reading

A is for Alibi

Author: Sue Grafton

Genre: soft-boiled mystery

Page number: 308

First published: 1982

Setting: CA, USA, in 1980’s

Rating: 2 stars

First sentence: My name is Kinsey Millhone.

One sentence comment: It’s hard to relate to any of the characters in the book.

 

          The first sentence is bland and so are many others. I’m disappointed about this book since I thought this long running series must be enchanting. It only tried to tell a drama of a group of non feeling people.

July Monthly Challenge

 

July # A book with an author whose first or last name begins with p, l, a, n, or t.

Magpie Murders

Author: Anthony Horowitz

Genre: meta mystery

Page number: 464

First published: 2016

Rating: 3 stars

First sentence: A bottle of wine.

One sentence comment: The idea of a mystery within a mystery is a genius invention; however, the structure of the book is dull.

 

          I ordered the book because the same name TV program adapted from the novel is brilliant so I wonder how Horowitz wrote it. However, I am disappointed because his way of presenting the two mysteries are rigid and can not compare with the TV program. I have a theory that if a TV program is better than a novel then the novel is not successful. Besides, I hardly see any witty sentences while reading. With so many repeated ideas and sentences, the book should be cut in half.

 

 

July # A book with plants on the cover

Persuasion

Author: Jane Austen

Genre: classic romance

Page number: 295

First published: 1817

Rating: 3 stars

First sentence: Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Boronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed.

One sentence comment: This book is the least persuading romance among Austen’s novels.

 

I can see why Persuasion is the least popular novel among Austen’s six major works. There is a serious discrepancy in the book. On the one hand, the book is far away from Austen's previous romantic novels because it tackles realistic financial matters gravely from the very beginning without jokes. Therefore, it was meant to be treated seriously. On the other hand, the happy ending between Anne and Wenworth is too incredible for modern day readers. In fact, there isn’t much difference between marriages then and now in terms of a trade-off between wealth and youth. It is not unusual for women to chase after well-off men even they are ten years or above older. How could it be possible that Wentworth, considered a capital match for young women with admiration, should come back to Ann, whose beauty and family wealth are both dwindling?

     Persuasion is Austen's last completed novel and published posthumously. I suspect that she intended to review it and to make it as entertaining as her previous books but death came unexpectedly. Therefore, without disguise, we can see Austen's core theme more clearly. It is lament for life going downward without hope when wealth and youth are both used up. However, as a romantic novelist, she still designed a favorable solution for the happiness of the heroine.

     I am not against romantic love but it must be plausible in a novel. Austen is a romantic writer but she is beyond romantic writing and renowned for her realistic social accounts so I expect more from her. Romantic love in P&P and S&S are all plausible, more or less, because male protagonists all have weaknesses so that they are attracted to women inferior to their social and monetary status, but Wentworth just seems self-contained and has no needs to return to Ann. Unless Austen decided to write a pious novel that used Wentworth as a metaphor of Jesus. That’s the only explanation because Jesus is perfect and he comes to save anyone who is repentant.

 

July # a book from your TBR

By Book or by Crook (Lighthouse Library Mystery #1)

Author: Eva Gates

Genre: cozy mystery

Page number: 327

First published: 2015

Rating: 3 stars

First sentence: Only in the very back of my mind, in my most secret dreams, did I ever dare hope I’d have such a moment.

One sentence comment: Using Jane Austen‘s first print collection as a gimmick, this book has turned a mystery into a comedy.

 

I had chosen this book among a few book-related cozy mystery series, perhaps for its book cover, or perhaps for its title, whatever reason I can not remember well. I adore the book cover - a sunny blue view near the sea and I think the title is clever. It is a play of a pun, by hook or by crook. Obviously, this book series use a similar way to glamor each book. Reading this book, sometimes I see witty sentences; sometimes it reads like a boring diary. Characters are described vividly but the protagonist is too young and girl-minded to raise my interest. The plot is terrible, because it's neither effective nor affective. How could a mystery mingle murder, book theft, and ghost stories, along with a detective noted for his handsome appearance and dating attempt to one of the suspects. It's absurd. However, I value this book for its well-written English.

 

 

July # DNF

Silver Pigs ( a Marcus Didius Falco Novel #1)

Author: Lindsey Davis

Genre: historical mystery

Page number: 328

First published: 1989

Rating: 1 star

First sentence: When the girl came rushing up the steps, I decided she was wearing far too many clothes.

One sentence comment: Who would be interested in a frivolous man as a protagonist?

 

          Look at the first sentence, and you will be surprised to see how many pages the protagonist was rambling on the clothes of the woman who ran for her life. As if time stopped. I should really admire the author for her writing technique.

          It took me a long time to wonder: what’s the meaning of this series. Perhaps it tried to tell me that Britain was full of brutal killings during the Roman reign in AD 70; perhaps it tried to show me what the mines and slaves who worked in them were like. Perhaps it told us modern readers that it had divorces and women could live independently at the golden age of Roman Empire. However, I don’t intend to read the Roman history. As a mystery series, it doesn’t propel me to want to read more about the protagonists and the plot.

 

 

Two books about Ireland and two Canadian debuts

 

Echoes

Author: Maeve Binchy

Genre: historical fiction

Page number: 737

First published: 1985

Rating: stars: five stars

First sentence: It was sometimes called Brigid’s Cave, the echo cave, and if you shouted your question loud enough in the right direction you got an answer instead of an echo.

One sentence comment: This is a book that makes me care about all the characters.

 

Echoes is another terrific book by Maeve Binchy. The title echoed in a few parts of the books to imply the deep aspiration from two protagonists, Angela and Clare, to have someone close to share their burden of life. These two women with about ten years between them, were caught by dilemmas and had to make decisions of their owns.

 

I love the characters that are strong and warm-hearted. Binchy had a great talent to tell Irish stories in which people’s lives were rocky and bitter but with humor and mutual understanding.

 

The book is also tinged with mystery. How will Angela and Clare be settled in their small town life when both of them seem to be misfits. How can Clare fall in love with David and give up her high hope of career? How will the pains of both family, the brothers of the two women, face their town people in the end? And how will Gerry, the lady's man through the book, die in the coast, according to the beginning of the book?

 

Absolution by Murder

Author: Peter Tremayne

Genre: historical mystery

Page number: 272

First published: 1994

Rating: stars: four stars

First sentence: The man had not been dead long.

One sentence comment: I was surprised that Ireland had such a glorious history as a religious leader in the 7^th century.

 

While reading the book, I suddenly realized that Ireland had a historical glory over England where it was a religious leader at that part of world.

 

Set in the 7th century, a Northern Kingdom in England was torn by religious forces between Ireland and Rome. Therefore a debate was held among religious leaders in order to decide which religious rituals to follow for the country. A series of murders happened during the time.

 

The heavy research involved in the book is marvelous. My criticism is that the author is not a great plotter, because the culprit was so obvious in the beginning of the investigation.

Still Life

Author: Louise Penny

Genre: mystery

Page number: 318

First published: 2005

Rating: 5 stars

First sentence: Miss Jane Neal met her maker in the early morning mist of Thanksgiving Sunday.

One sentence comment: I had never read a modern mystery like this book, so elegant worded with touching thoughts.

 

Beyond a beautiful cover of the misty October, this book has brought to me an experience of a remote Canadian village. Published in the beginning of the 21st century, this book deals with the issues of our present time - rogue teens, lone elderlies, feeling animals and people of faltering faith of God. Reading the author's elegant language combined with elements of art and poetry, I feel the reading week  has been a real treat.

 

The Push

Author: Ashley Audrain

Genre: fiction

Page number: 303

First published: 2021

Rating: 3 stars

First sentence: Your house glows at night like everything inside is on fire.

One sentence comment: This book reminds me of the kids I met who played pranks on their friends but were unaffected by their suffering.

 

The narrative of this book is sometimes vivid and thrilling, but superfluous in many parts.

 

Books, Friend’s Visit and Bible Study in February

 

# 4 Title starting with the letter “H”

Hangsaman

Author: Shirley Jackson

Genre: Fiction

Page number: 218

Rating: 1 star

One sentence comment: I am not convinced why this book is necessary since lots of the plot is either not important or clear.

 

I adored Jackson’s The Hunting Hill House even though I don’t read horror normally. However, about this book, I was confused right from the beginning. When the protagonist talked to her parents, ‘a detective’ suddenly spoke to her. The author seemed to use Stream of consciousness in her writing. I just dislike this type of writing. I dragged myself to page 70 then gave it up.

 

#5 Title starting with the letter “I”

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944 - 1956

Author: Anne Applebaum

Genre: Non-fiction

Page number: 470

Rating: 4 stars

First sentence: Among many other things, the year 1945 marked one of the most extraordinary population movements in European history.

One sentence comment: What happened in the Eastern Europe was formidable with persecution, resistance and sacrifice.

 I’m not used to reading books about communism. I bought the book from the internet in the beginning of the Ukrainian war last year when there was lots of talks about the author, and then I put it on my shelf. This book club prompt motivated me to read the book finally.

 Before reading the book, I have never imagined the devastated state in Eastern Europe after the war. “During the occupation, it became normal to change one’s name and profession, to travel on false papers, to memorize a fabricate biography, to watch all of one’s money lose its value overnight, to see people rounded up in the street like cattle.” Nither have I ever imagined the Russian Red Army were such brutal soldiers. The second chapter is about the occupation in 1945. “They appeared so shocked by the material wealth of Eastern Europe…. They found ordinary peasants who owned several chickens, a couple of cows, and more thatn one change of clothes. They found small contry towns with stone churches, cobbled streets, and people riding bicycles, which were then still unkown to most of Russia….What they don’t steal, they often destroyed…. In Poland, Soviet tanks deliberately destroyed a thousand-year-old cathedral that had no military significance…. Burning to the ground the priceless book collection of the university library…. Angry soldiers of the Red Army seemed consumed by a desire of revenge…. Women of all ages were subjected to gang rape and sometimes murdered afterward.” Communist leaders from Easter Europe endured purges and policy changed then survived, but most of them stayed loyal to Stalin, which is implausible to me.

 The postwar mass deportation of ethnic Germans was diabolical. They were treated inhuman, starved and beaten as a result of revenge by the Eastern European people. Some of them “moved into Polish or Jewish homes, following the muder or eviction the owners.” Therefore Churchill and Roosevelt approved of the ethnic cleansing policy. Then deportation camps transformed to prisons and communists were in charge of the distribution of German property. Stalin also forced Poles to leave towns and cities that had been Polish-speaking for centuries to colonize in German-speaking places. Ukrainians were also sent to Soviet Ukraine. “By 1950, not much remained of multiethnic Eastern Europe."

 There bound to be countless traumatic cases. In postwar Poland, a Jew was found abusing German prisoners, including women and children, and was responsible for an epidemic. He was arrested for war crime, but later he was identified as a victim, who had suffered from Nazi genocide. Many Jews left their countries for America, Western Europe, and Palestine, because it was impossible “to live in the towns and villages that had become cemetries of their families.” Besides, there were still brutal attacks on Jews after the war.

 The above is only the beginning of the book. Later there are more persecution towards people’s belief. Numerous political leaders and religious priests were put in prison and tortured. This book is full of stories about many different people at the time. It reads like a condensed novels with various layers.

#9     A book with a dedication

City of Lies (#1 of the counterfeit lady series)

Author: Victoria Thompson

Genre: Historical history

Page number: 325

Rating: 3 stars

First sentence: Jake looked much too SMUG.

One sentence comment: An unrealistic protagonist can not make a brilliant story.

 

The story begins with a suffragist movement, in which we get the pictures of prison, starve strike and force feeding. It carries a mission of the important history at the time, but can be boring and pretentious, because the protagonist was too unrealistic. However, the writer was able to keep her humorous tone all over the book so that there was still fun in reading.

 

My friend’s visit

It was the first time that my friend stayed at my flat in spite of our long-term friendship. On one of the five days, we went to our university where we had attended classes in different classrooms more than thirty years ago. There were many people and things we could talk about as if they stayed the same but the university has gone through lots of physical changes. I found my friend changed very little, still giggling like a girl. She is still not treating life seriously. She has knowledge about many things but doesn’t have a clue about her own matters. She cried with tears when talking about her husband but she didn’t have a strong motivation to solve the problem of their relationship. I wonder whether it is the same whenever one is tangled in an unhappy marriage. She asks so little from life and simply content with the basic need purely in terms of materialism.

 

Bible study

After my friend left, my church friend, Mayling, and I started to take Bible lessons from Paster Kim. I have been inspired by Kim’s Sunday sermon and realized that I’d paied too little attention to the structure of Kingdom of God. By listening to Kim more often, I am amazed by his spiritual level. He was sent to spread the Good News as a missionary in the southeast of China, and he spent time living with Hmong people in an unsanitary and uncivilized environment. In the end he was sent to prison by the government. I am glad that this study has brought me closer to God, and I began to pray for people I meet everyday. It changes the way I see things when I encounter difficult students, because now I am concious of their need and of my positive reaction towards them.