Heena’s Comments (group member since Oct 13, 2014)

Heena’s comments from the RMFAO (Reading My Frigging A** Off) group.

JJ wrote: "Hey, I'm JJ! I'm a student and I enjoy reading and sports. I'm trying to read more and I think the book community seems lovely! I like sci-fi generally :) I'm hoping to get to know this community a..."

Hello, JJ, Welcome to the group! Hope you'll enjoy here and many many friends and obviously read a lot more books with everyone :)

My first for May -

1. The Alchemist - 2/5

Started off good but the ending felt a bit climatic. The effect was lost on me, though the buildup was creepy.

Cheryl wrote: "May Bonus Challenge:
10.) The Devil Crept In by Ania Ahlborn
3 stars. A "monster in the woods" horror story. Good, but kind of gorey."

Thanks for the review, Cheryl. I'm adding this to my TBR list.

OMG, Cheryl! You read so many! Great going :)

Dagny wrote: "Heena wrote: "(I'll mostly be reading HP Lovecraft's stories.)"

Don't read those aloud to all the fur babies! Oh, that's right, Eva and Whiskey probably like to stay awake all night anyway, so it ..."

Haha... Eva's creepy stalking is sure to give me a heart attack while reading Lovecraft's stories late at night. Lol.

Joanne wrote: "Wow a dog and a cat at once and both young. Good luck with that sounds like challenging times. But well worth it. Good on you I couldn’t do animals anymore, we travel too much and I would only want chickens."

It was a surprise for us too. Lol. We just planned the pup and the kitten just came into our lives out of nowhere (but for good :)
We also travel a lot, so we are now looking for good hostels and babysitters who can look after our fur babies.
Chickens do sound adorable. I never had one but I plan to have them and cows in the future :)

Apologies everyone for going AWOL. We got a GSD pup and rescued a 15-day old kitten in May and taking care of both of them along with our 10-month-old kitten took all of my time. I wasn't able to finish May's challenge as I'd planned, and as I see it I'm totally lagging behind in this month's challenge as well, but I'll try to read at least a couple of short classics before the end of the month (I'll mostly be reading HP Lovecraft's stories.)
Hope you all have been doing well!

Joanne wrote: "I have picked up a copy of everything everything am I too late to read it with you.?"

Doesn't matter, we all keep on checking the threads so we all would be more than happy to discuss the book with you while you read it :)

Cheryl wrote: "Heena wrote: " It's been 7 years now, but she's still upset with me for having not left her with an option, as if I am not a person, but only an option for her.."

That must have been a terrible th..."

This might come as a surprise, but we do not have any child care system in place here :(
My mom didn't work partly because of social prejudices and partly because she didn't want to.

Hello, Sonu, welcome to the group.

OMG, I'm so far behind in this one!

#3 Dragon God - 1/5

#4 Looking for Dei - 4/5

Joanne - I guess the comment is deleted now (have no idea who did it) but I did read it a while ago, sorry for replying now (I'd been busy taking care of my new puppy.)
I liked your idea a lot, loved it in fact, but as Cheryl rightly said, it's a lot of work for the moderators. I earlier thought of something similar - about having a score-system where we'll have a winner at the end of the year, but that seemed like a lot of work for the readers as well.
I'm in on this idea of keeping scores if the readers are okay to keep a tab on their personal tallies.
Maybe we can discuss this idea further and make it a bit simple and have it from next year (so that everyone can join in since the beginning.)

What do say Dagny and Cheryl?

I would like to share about a book I read in the start of this month, a contemporary book on illness - this was based on an accident, and was definitely more technical than this one. It is a beautiful book, with very strong characterization and if you have some time, then do give one a try - How to Walk Away

Cheryl wrote: "Thank you for sharing about the abuse in your family. I'm so sorry you had to go through that painful time.
I wonder if some of the things we didn't like in this book were due to an editor's decision to change or cut out parts of the story? I mention this because of another book I read, We Were Liars. In that story, a group of cousins called themselves The Liars Club but it was never mentioned why they chose that name. The author was answering questions on the book's Goodreads page and explained that her editor cut the scene where she explains the origins of the Liars Club name. (Stupid decision, I thought, since the title references the club.) So, maybe something similar happened to Nicola Yoon and this book? Maybe all the missing medical stuff was edited out? "

It was a long time ago, but I do tend to hyperventilate when any related subject comes up.

I guess that might be the case. Editors do go for the commercial value rather than the quality, so they might have done it to appeal young adults as I'm sure youngsters wouldn't have appreciated a lot of details of the medical things.

Dagny wrote: "I don't know if abuse was involved or not, but a girl I went to high school with had a mother who was very unhappy in her marriage for whatever reason. There were two daughter. The day after the younger one graduated from high school the mother left and filed for divorce. "

That's exactly what happens in most of the cases. My mom always told me the moment I would complete my engineering she'll leave my step and come and stay with me so that I can take care of her and my brother. I'm not saying that a mother shouldn't depend on children, on the contrary, I strongly believe that children should take care of their parents, but what I experienced made me feel like I was just another puppet that my mom wanted in her hands. In this case, she was the one who was making me what she wanted me to be. And that was one of the reasons she really went off the rails and got mad at me for not completing engineering and getting married to me (the marriage happened because my step asked me to leave the house and my mom stood by him the entire time.) It's been 7 years now, but she's still upset with me for having not left her with an option, as if I am not a person, but only an option for her.
I hate Maddy's mom for thinking that she can do whatever with her child's life and to be honest, I don't find it odd that she left her mother in the end.
Sorry for the rant. :)

I agree the main theme was abuse by parents - which is a lot more common than people believe it to be. The physical abuse was pretty straightforward and was not covered in detail, which made me feel disconnected from the entire thing, but I was quite intrigued by the emotional and psychological abuse.

Maddy is naive, too naive in my opinion as I've seen from personal experience that people (young or otherwise) tend to be more mature if they are going through a serious and unfortunate circumstance, but here Maddy was all I-am-getting-tropical-air-from-a-heated-fan-and-am-totally-okay-with-it kind of naive. As Cheryl said, If I too would have been in her shoes, I would have searched the hell out of Google about my condition (As I do now as well, even if it is as minor as a viral fever) and would have tried to help my mom (who I feel so indebted to) by finding new breakthroughs and possible success stories of similar cases.

I'm not exactly sure how nurses work there (in US) but here the pretty much rely on the doctor (at least when it comes to diagnosis of an illness), so I didn't find it odd that she believed Maddy'smom. But when she mentioned that she had a doubt, then I guess she didn't do the right thing by not at least trying to satisfy her doubt by digging deeper. Here she was wrong because I'm pretty sure she knew that the ONLY doctor Maddy was being seen by was her mother, so if she doubted Maddy's mother even for a second, it was her duty to have checked further.

As for the subject of physical abuse, I know no one wants to hear this but a lot of women don't leave their husbands because of financial dilemmas - My father was abusive, but my mother didn't leave him because she didn't want to go out and work and provide for us. She chose my alcoholic but rich father in spite of him being abusive. But she did leave him once he started selling off properties for his addiction and chose someone else (my step) who was financially sound. So there are a lot of things that women take into account when it comes to leaving their husbands - and trust me, women are extremely cunning and smart when it comes to their own survival. I guess Olly's mom would have separated from her husband anyway once Olly would have started working. I know a lot of people won't agree with me, but I've seen far too many cases of divorce, in my own family, where this exact same thing has happened.

In the end, I liked the twist about Maddy's mom lying to her more than anything and that is the only thing that really made reading this book worth it for me. :)

Welcome to the group Shahanaz, Yash, Samantha and Joanne.

Hope you guys will have loads of fun here and meet new book buddies!

I love your way of asking questions and picking topics for discussion Cheryl! I'm waiting for your next one, very eagerly!!

I finished last night. Let me just say - The author totally blew my mind away with that twist! I mean, here I was like the book doesn't feel real, it feels fake and the struggles are not shown properly and many more things... and with a single twist it was all explained... just like that everything made sense.

I'm not sure if we should start talking about spoilers or not, but I'm just gonna say that I'm glad that I read this book!

I'm starting my 5th for the month, but before that, I'll quickly update the ones I'm done with:

2. The Lost Path - 2/5 - The illustrations were really good but the story overall turned out to be a let down. The concept felt underdeveloped and I wasn't even sure where the story was headed exactly after only 20 pages.

3. Little Moments of Love - 5/5 - I've always loved illustrations by Catana (or memes to be exact.) They are the perfect comics describing a relationship between two people who really love one another. Catana's characters are so adorable and the comics overall was very good and nicely developed.

4. Everything, Everything - 4/5 - It started out okay for me, but really picked up towards the end. I'm giving an extra star for the author blowing away my mind with the one, (and the only, twist in the book. I'm glad that I read it.