BingoDOG reads in November

For those of us still working on our Bingo cards, I thought I'd start a November thread! I have 3 Bingo squares remaining, and I've picked out what I plan to read for each one:

1) Autobiography/memoir -- currently reading The Spy Wore Red by Aline, Countess of Romanones, for this one.
2) Book published more than 100 years ago -- I plan to read Wired Love: A Romance of Dots and Dashes by Ella Cheever Thayer, originally published in 1879.
3) Book with a beautiful cover -- I actually really like the reprint cover of Murder for Christmas by Francis Duncan, which I was planning to read in December anyway.

What squares do you have remaining, and what are you planning to read for Bingo this month?

Oh, thanks for setting this up. I just finished The invisible library for the "new to you author" square on my second card. The Pacific will be most difficult to fill a second time, I think.

I was wondering if there was still anyone else working on it!

It may be a bit of a stretch, but I'm using "Doctor" as a rank, so this is for the "Title contains a person's rank.

Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account / Miklos Nyiszli
3.5 stars

Miklos Nysizli was a Hungarian Jew taken to Auschwitz with his wife and daughter. He was a doctor and was taken on to work in the crematoriums, primarily doing autopsies. Most of the Jews who worked in the crematoriums were killed, but luckily for Nyiszli, he made it through.

I imagine when this book was originally published, in 1960, it was quite shocking. It still is, but I’ve read so much about the Holocaust, that there wasn’t a lot new, though there was some. I feel badly that I’m not rating it higher. I didn’t feel as much of an emotional connection (usually) as I thought I might. I’m not sure if it was written in a more detached way; both as a doctor and just trying to force himself to get through it all to survive, I’m sure he had to do his best to try to detach. He did say at the start of the book that he is a doctor, not a writer, so maybe that was part of it, as well (though it was definitely “readable”). Still, a worthwhile read, for sure.

I have two or three squares left. I'm filling the "famous person name in title" square with MacGregor's Gathering, by Nigel Tranter (Rob Roy MacGregor being the "famous person").

I have 4 squares left and I'm not sure if I'll finish them or not. (I am working on one) The hardest will be the one written more than 100 years ago. I've looked at the wiki for what others have read and there's not much that interests me.

Another square filled: in Der Kaffeedieb a group of adventurers travel from Holland to Arabia to steal coffee trees. Well written, well researched, engaging characters and a great story.

I finally got a bingo, finally. On the diagonal. I filled in Relative's Name in the Title with The Marsh King's Daughter by Karen Dionne.

The story of a girl born in captivity (her mother was kidnapped and forced to live an isolated existence as her father's "wife" for fourteen years in the Minnesota Upper Peninsula marsh) and dealing with the aftermath of her childhood reminded me just a little of Educated by Tara Westover, which I recently read. This is quite often suspenseful, but I found the writing to frequently be choppy and repetitive. I understand Helena's conflicted love for her father, but her continued lack of empathy for her mother even into adulthood disturbed me, and I don't think she ever really addressed the enormity of the trauma she suffered. I found the final "hunt" to be a bit of a letdown, as well, but overall this was a decent read.

I have 8 more squares remaining and I don't hold out hopes of getting another bingo. This was a tough card for me.

I have finished Les champs d'honneur which fits the autobiography or memoir square, as the author reminisces about his family.

I finally read the book I'd set aside for the "new to you author" square: Designs on Life, by Elizabeth Ferrars. Really good collection of short stories. I'll be on the lookout for more of her work.

I filled the "beautiful cover" with Genevieve Cogman's The masked city, which I think is very stylish.

I finally got my first bingo! I read The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein for the ">500 pages" square. Fortunately, the prose was more readable than I expected for a nonfiction tome, so the pages really flew by.

I made a December thread here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/299671.