Otahuhu College

67,759 pages read and 6,094 team points

Team members

BTL

7,330 pts

(6,955 pages read)

Long Island

By Colm Toibin

5 stars

It all goes wrong in various relationships and the very last sentence finally makes someone's character clear.
Cloud Cuckoo Land

By Anthony Doerr

5 stars

Really interesting, highly recommend, especially to a group of people who have an above-average belief in the power of books, children, and education! Three stories, some sad, some happy, that come together through time through the power of an ancient Greek fable. Listed in my library as fantasy, but really it's 1/3 historical fiction, 1/3 contemporary fiction, and 1/3 sci fi.
What Blooms from Death

By SM Gaither

3 stars

Good worldbuilding: a world of darkness that needs help, because the world of light has stolen too much power. But I found that the romance part of the romantasy was driving the plot more than I liked. Story first, romance second please. But would read the next book when it comes out.
Kurangaituku

By Whiti Hereaka

3 stars

I am a big fan of the ideas behind and in this book, I just couldn't get into it - I had to encourage myself to read. I think there wasn't enough dialogue to keep it moving, although I realise Kura's lack of voice is one of the main points of the book. I love seeing a story from the "monster's" point of view, and I'm pretty converted to her being a better being than Hatupatu! I was intrigued by the way the story could be read from either end (literally: the pages are flipped the other way up and all the copyright stuff is repeated, so you can't tell which way you "should" start). We're discussing it in a book club in a week and I think it will be a 5 star discussion!
Money for Nothing

By Thomas Levenson

4 stars

The book is a history of the South Sea Bubble, which occured in England in 1720. It was one of those things I'd always vaguely heard of, so it was cool to learn more about it. The author did his best to make a bunch of confusing financial terminology make sense - it didn't entirely, but I think that's my fault rather than his!
River of Smoke

By Amitav Ghosh

4 stars

A book set in a time when Western capitalists spout lies -- and appear to believe them -- in order to force access to the world's most lucrative trade, even if it means declaring war... it's Canton, China, in the leadup to the First Opium War, but Amitav Ghosh is never one for just writing about the past. A wide cast of characters, and occasionally Ghosh struggles to keep them all in their own voices, but overall this allows the story to be develop through its numerous angles quite well.
Henry V

By Dan Jones

5 stars

Very well written history that is at the same time well-researched and clear-eyed. Dan Jones doesn't just big up Henry as the victor at Agincourt - he looks at everything about his life and kingship that made him incredibly successful (by the standards of the time).
The Silver Branch

By Rosemary Sutcliff

4 stars

Love rereading my favourite kids' books to mega relax over the summer. You know the good guys will always win in the end! The adventures of two Romans in Britain as the Roman Empire starts to weaken due to Saxon invasions and internal battles for the emperorship.
The Old Testament: A Brief Introduction

By Christoph Levin

3 stars

Intended to help me prepare for classes next year but neither general nor specific enough to be very useful.
Floating in a most peculiar way

By Louis Chude-Sokei

4 stars

A memoir by a man (now a professor of the literature of the Black diaspora) about growing up with famous Nigerian parentage and a Jamaican accent he wants to hide in a dangerous part of Los Angeles. He's clearly had a very interesting life but he seemed to skip over some key bits (how, exactly, did he get from getting in fights to going to university?). And the prose was sometimes confusing - did he really think all that through as a child? Or is his adult self reflecting back?
World Without End

By Ken Follet

4 stars

Great book for a plane journey to America - no way to run out of book before the end of the journey! Not quite as good as the first one, Pillars of the Earth, but the medieval setting is very real and the characters are interesting.
Beauty

By Robin McKinley

4 stars

Pleasant, happy retelling of Beauty and the Beast with (a bit of) a feminist spin.
The Wayfinder

By Adam Johnson

5 stars

Wow, great book. Set in an undated but pre-European Tongan-dominated Pacific, featuring parrots, poetry and dances, lost islands, various nasty people and a few beautiful souls. Johnson has clearly done heaps and heaps of research - he's not Pasifika himself, but I learned more about island cultures from this novel than I have from a year teaching in a Pasifika-dominated school. And it's not going to make you miss the good old days!
Ghosts of Gondwana

By George Gibbs

5 stars

Super interesting, but even though it's intended for lay readers, it's still dense. Read as much as I could while I was at someone else's bach with it!
Eragon

By Christopher Paolini

4 stars

I thought it was better as an adult than when I read it as a child! The human relationships are pretty real.
The Nutmeg's Curse

By Amitav Ghosh

3 stars

Starts well, with an intense story about Dutch colonisation in the 'nutmeg islands' of Indonesia, and then goes on to urge some interesting thoughts about European colonialism, a mindset toward planetary resources, and the current climate crisis. But it felt increasingly waffle-y, without the clear evidence of the first chapter. Didn't finish, but did make me think.
Bound by Knighthood

By Nicki Chapelway

3 stars

Not bad, some good ideas about how magic operates.

13 - 0 - 1

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Otahuhu College

67,759 pages read and 6,094 team points

Team members

R D Mattocks

Duynhocath

RThomason

BTL

Joanne

HanaGW

HMY

Alaa

srhart

EmNorgsBish

FionaN

ReneeL

Kenelwe

BTL

Long Island

Cloud Cuckoo Land

What Blooms from Death

Kurangaituku

Money for Nothing

River of Smoke

Henry V

The Silver Branch

The Old Testament: A Brief Introduction

Floating in a most peculiar way

World Without End

Beauty

The Wayfinder

Ghosts of Gondwana

Eragon

The Nutmeg's Curse

Bound by Knighthood

Otahuhu College

67,759 pages read and 6,094 team points

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