Sheri’s Comments (group member since Jul 25, 2016)

Sheri’s comments from the EPBOT Readers group.

Susan, that one is for read harder :) I'm still working on that challenge, but more slowly. I have a hold on Queen of Air, so I should get it soon!

My reading list

Yeah, there's some good prompts on the advanced list, I'd say go for it! I posted my whole reading list in a new topic, if you wanted to check it out.

Haha, I just was going through my list and realized I'd counted Blind Assassin for two things. Luckily, I over-read so I added Their Eyes Were Watching God as my story within a story, instead. So my finish still counts!

I finished my popsugar challenge, so here is my final reading list for it. I don't have time to go link every one to the goodreads listing right now, I might go back and do it later.

Edit: I just realized I accidentally counted one book twice. Luckily I've over read so I was able to sub in something else, haha.

*1. A book recommended by a librarian - Adulthood Is a Myth
*2. A book that's been on your TBR list for way too long - Nimona
*3. A book of letters - The Screwtape Letters
*4. An audiobook - Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
*5. A book by a person of color - Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
*6. A book with one of the four seasons in the title - The Winter People
*7. A book that is a story within a story - Their Eyes Were Watching God
*8. A book with multiple authors - Welcome to Night Vale
*9. An espionage thriller - Code Name Verity
*10. A book with a cat on the cover - The Sun Trail
*11. A book by an author who uses a pseudonym - Feed
*12. A bestseller from a genre you don't normally read - The Danish Girl
*13. A book by or about a person who has a disability - Phantom Pains
*14. A book involving travel - The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
*15. A book with a subtitle - Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage, and Manners
*16. A book that's published in 2017 - Heartache
*17. A book involving a mythical creature - The Dragon and the Unicorn
*18. A book you've read before that never fails to make you smile - The Night Circus
*19. A book about food - Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
*20. A book with career advice - You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life
*21. A book from a nonhuman perspective - Ancillary Justice
*22. A steampunk novel - The Girl in the Steel Corset
*23. A book with a red spine - Blueprints for Building Better Girls: Fiction
*24. A book set in the wilderness - Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
*25. A book you loved as a child - Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher
*26. A book by an author from a country you've never visited - The Little Paris Bookshop
*27. A book with a title that's a character's name - MILA 2.0
*28. A novel set during wartime - The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story
*29. A book with an unreliable narrator - We Were Liars
*30. A book with pictures - Library of Souls
*31. A book where the main character is a different ethnicity than you - Americanah
*32. A book about an interesting woman - Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
*33. A book set in two different time periods - Redshirts
*34. A book with a month or day of the week in the title - Tuesdays at the Castle
*35. A book set in a hotel - The Shining
*36. A book written by someone you admire - Norse Mythology
*37. A book that's becoming a movie in 2017: In a Dark, Dark Wood
*38. A book set around a holiday other than Christmas - Labor Day
*39. The first book in a series you haven't read before - Wool
*40. A book you bought on a trip - Immortal Nights


Advanced Challenge

*1. A book recommended by an author you love - The Wee Free Men
* 2. A bestseller from 2016 - Red Queen
*3. A book with a family member term in the title - My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry
*4. A book that takes place over a character's life span - The Blind Assassin
*5. A book about an immigrant or refugee - Salt to the Sea
*6. A book from a genre/subgenre you've never heard of - Songs of Insurrection
*7. A book with an eccentric character - Ready Player One
* 8. A book that's more than 800 pages - Kushiel's Dart
*9. A book you got from a used book sale - The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
*10. A book that's been mentioned in another book - Wuthering Heights
*11. A book about a difficult topic - The Underground Railroad
*12. A book based on mythology- Hammered

Hi Stephanie,

Yep, I did the extended list as well. My book over 800 pages was Kushiel's Dart, it's very good. I'd warn that there's some racier stuff in there. The main character is an anguisette which is basically a person born to take pain and love it, and she was bought and raised to be a high end courtesan and spy because of this. I love all of her books, but I know reading about that sort of thing isn't for everyone.

The book about sports is on Read Harder, I decided to shelve the ballet book for now. I've got that circus performer book on hold at the library that I'm going to read instead.

You already mentioned putting My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry on your reading list, I highly recommend that one. Then hmm...maybe The Dragon and the Unicorn. It was just such a rich book full of a mix of Arthurian legend, mythology, science, magic. if you wanted a third, since you'd already put the first on your list, I absolutely love The Night Circus which I'd counted for my book that always makes me smile. It is just such a dreamy book. Every time I read it, I just see the circus unfolding and I want to go to it. I've done a bunch of drawings inspired by it, and I dressed in black and white to be a performer from it for Halloween a few years ago.

Hi Everyone!

Posting a little later than usual this week, because I was cheating and trying to finish the book I was reading. This is because I HAVE FINISHED THE CHALLENGE! Woo!

So, this week I finished:

Tricked - Another Iron Druid book, it's a good series.

Saga, Vol. 1 - I'd started this a while ago, got distracted. Just now got back to it. Now I need to go find vol 2, it was so good.

Their Eyes Were Watching God - for Read Harder's classic by a person of color.
This was good, but started a bit slow for me. It also was a banned book at one point, which is pretty ridiculous.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry - This was it, the final book! Counts for my book with a family member in the title. It was SO GOOD. Great way to wrap up the challenge, glad I patiently waited for the library loan and not just going out and and reading whatever I could get fast. It was such a sweet story, and told really interestingly. It was hard to tell if it was a fantasy novel, at times. but I think that was part of the discovery.

So yay! now i'm done! I still have read harder to work through, but that's shorter and I care less about it.

Currently I am reading Shadow Magic which is just for fun, i like Patricia Wrede.

How's everyone else doing?

Haha, yeah. I pretty much only buy physical books if it's a favorite author, or I LOVED the book. Or comics that I really love the art for. Otherwise most my book buying is digitally where if I buy it and don't read it for a year or two, it's only taking up digital space. I have two 7 ft tall book cases, and I'm trying to keep my book collection confined to those (...its not really working) because I don't really have anywhere else to put book shelves right now. at least until/if we build our master suite addition and I can dub the current master bedroom as the "library/guest room if we really must have more than one guest at a time, but why would you do that to me? room"

I have read a few other McKinley books, usually as I get them cheap, haha. I read Sunshine when i was trying to go through the NPR top 100 Sci-Fi and Fantasy books, and I picked up Beauty at some point. And I think I had some random fairy type one from her, I don't remember what it was called. Most my reading anymore is library, or stuff from my "book deals of the day" emails that are cheap. Under $5 is impulse buy, over $5 I have to specifically really want a book. (over $7 I will probably waffle about it until I find a sale ;p)

Julie wrote: "Oh I love The Hero and the Crown!! Have read The Blue Sword? It's a companion book. Robin McKinley actually wrote The a Blue Sword first and much of the folklore in it became The Hero and the Crown..."

Nope, not yet. Hero and the Crown was in one of my book bundles, the Blue Sword was not, haha. I did really like it, so I'll probably get it at some point.

Susan, I picked up quiet from the library too, based on Epbot. It's on the list as I read against due dates!

Hi Stephanie,
I read the Divergent series, I agree with you that it's pretty derivative. I don't want to discourage you from finishing it, if you are into it, but the second two books were way weaker than the first. Just thought I'd give fair warning!

Hi everyone!

Had a little bit of a slow week this week. I think I was in a bit of a reading funk, where I didn't know what to read so I just meandered through Reserved for the Cat . It was a holiday this week, which kind of threw everything off too. Had to work monday, but tuesday was off, so I did make up some time there.

Then I went through my unread kindle stash and settled on The Hero and the Crown. I really liked it! Good female-lead high fantasy. Kind of black-sheep of the family girl goes off and teaches herself how to slay dragons to prove she has use to the family. They're small ones, considered vermin so it's not really an honorable calling to the general public, but she figures she's helping her people out. It generally propels her on a quest to become an full fledged hero.

I started reading Magic Steps, but then a slew of library books came in.

Tricked is the first of them, which is a continuation of a series I started at the end of last year and only managed to read one more this year for the mythological prompt. Now that I'm basically done with it, aside from the last book I'm waiting on, I'm picking up on series I let flounder. I'm still doing Read Harder, but that challenge is less exciting so i'm just slowly hitting a book here or there.

How's everyone else's weeks going?

Hi all,

So I admit to being at something of a loss with this one. Ready Player One did have some questions I found for discussion groups, that I did eventually post. But I'm not really finding anything for this one, either because it's too new or not many book clubs have selected it.

I did find a reddit AMA with the author, should anyone wish to read it Here

Sorry for my lack of organization, I probably should have looked into this sooner. But it's July now, when i slated "official" discussion to begin, so if anyone has anything further they want to say about the book, fire away.

Stephanie,
No judgement on the bodice rippers! I'm an unrepentant consumer of vampire smut as I call it. (Aka paranormal romances but still). And I don't just read it, I re read it. They're so good for a mental break!

Glad you finished Oryx and Crake! I know what you mean though. I'll feel Noah the series at some point but I needed a break.

That last book sounds good, but maybe a bit later. I just went through Underground Railroad, need a bit more time before tackling another heavy hitter.

Glad to see more people checking in!

Welcome, Sara!

I don't know if I could do Water for Elephants, animal mistreatment bothers me too.

I was ok with the ending for Handmaid's tale, because of the nature of it, that the story was a found record that got cut off. I mean yeah it could be argued that it was lazy writing to do that, but i find it less annoying than if they'd just cut off the story and left it with no wrap up at all.

I don't super love James Patterson, though I did get through his Maximum Ride books, some of them anyhow. He has interesting ideas, but i don't love the writing style. Probably similar to how you felt!

Larissa wrote: "I found it interesting that Foundation was in the adult fiction section of the library, but it read a bit like a YA novel - probably because the protagonist is only 13 years old."

yeah he grows up as the series progresses. The Valdemar series in general she writes as adult fiction, even though a lot of the series start with the protagonist as a teen, they grow as the series progresses. I think Mags is more like 18 by the time the series ends, and the next series involving him i think he's in his 20s or so. The Arrows series starts with Talia as 13, but she's probably 20-ish by the time it ends.

She does write some YA too, but that's usually co-authored.

If you like her writing, I also recommend her 500 Kingdom series, and the Elemental Masters. :)

Also The Black Swan is one of her solo books, and it's basically one of my favorite books ever. I've read it so many times entire chunks of pages are falling out of it.

Susan wrote: "Here's a random thought, I wonder if a new announcement on the FoE page would be in order. There are probably a lot of new people there or ones who missed it the first time around."

I actually just did make another post a day or two ago! The group's so big, it's hard to see everything. Several people commented to bump it, but I'm sure there's still plenty who haven't seen it any of the times I posted.

Susan wrote: "Here's a short (under 2 minutes) video with footage of her from c1928. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxcJ9..."

That's awesome, thanks! And my library actually had the book digitally, so I put a hold on it!

Susan wrote: "I might suggest Queen of the Air: A True Story of Love and Tragedy at the Circus. It is in the same realm as ballet in terms of sport I think (as an adult who dabbles in circus aeri..."

Thanks! I'm willing to stretch for the topic. I have zero interest in anything that is considered a traditional sport. So I'm willing to count anything that is athletic as a sport. So I'll see if I can find that!