Rachel’s Comments (group member since Jan 04, 2017)

Rachel’s comments from the 2022 ONTD Reading Challenge group.

I plan on reading Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer as my January book. If you also picked Annihilation, here's the place to discuss it!

Winner of the 2015 Nebula Award.

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; all the members of the second expedition committed suicide; the third expedition died in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another; the members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within months of their return, all had died of aggressive cancer.

This is the twelfth expedition.

Their group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain and collect specimens; to record all their observations, scientific and otherwise, of their surroundings and of one another; and, above all, to avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them, and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another, that change everything.

A Monster Calls is sooo good. I cried a lot reading it!

Also, the illustrations are gorgeous so I'd definitely recommend the physical copy over the ebook!

I decided to put Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer on hold at the library!

HOW TO ADD HTML TO A GOODREADS POST:

Hey everyone,

If you're new to Goodreads, or new to the groups, here are a few tips!

If you have any other questions let me know.

HOW TO ADD A BOOK TITLE, BOOK COVER, or AUTHOR TO YOUR POST:

Let's say you want to add a comment to a post and talk about the book Dracula. Right above the comment box is a link to click where you can add the book and/or author:

Type in the book or author who want to add and click search. When you see the book you want, you need to click add:


The book will then show up as a hyperlink to its Goodreads page:
Dracula

If you want to also include the author, repeat the steps, but instead search for author:

Dracula Bram Stoker

If you want to include the book's cover image, selection the option for "cover," search and then add.


so it will look like this:

Juliana wrote: "Adding to this post so people have more choices!

http://booksandchardonnay.com/books-b..."

Thanks so much for this link :) I added it to the master post.

Welcome to the 2017 ONTD Reading Challenge! We know that reading is not ONTD’s strong suit, but this year, hjalmartazar (Rachel) and milfordacademy (Lea) invite you to join the ONTD Reading Challenge: 12 books, 12 months, and ONTD-themed categories.

The rules are simple:

• Each month, read a book that corresponds to the category.
• No page limit.
• It can be a book that you’ve already read.
• Novellas, graphic novels, audiobooks and anthologies can count toward a category
• If you missed a month, you can go back and read a previous month’s task.
• Keep us updated on how your reading challenge is going on our book posts!

JANUARY - A book that is being adapted into a movie or TV show in 2017
It's always fun to read a book before it is made into a movie or TV show - you'll get to complain about all the things the adaptation didn't get right in the ONTD posts about it.

These are just SOME of the books that fit into this category:

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race - Margot Lee Shetterly
The Dark Tower - Stephen King
American Gods- Neil Gaiman
Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie
Live by Night - Dennis Lehane
A Wrinkle in Time- Madeleine L'Engle
The Invisible Man - HG Wells
Big Little Lies- Liane Moriarty
Wonder- RJ Palacio
The Adventures of Captain Underpants- Dav Pilkey
Jumanji - Chris Van Allsburg
The Cuckoo's Calling - Robert Galbraith
The Zookeeper's Wife- Diane Ackerman
The Circle- Dave Eggers
The Mountain Between Us- Charles Martin
Red Sparrow - Jason Matthews
The Sense of an Ending- Julian Barnes
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
It - Stephen King

More book ideas here: http://booksandchardonnay.com/books-b...

FEBRUARY - “We are all learning”
I’m glad we are having this conversation. It’s time (to read some non-fiction!). This month, pick up a non-fiction book that you can learn something from. Some examples:

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America - Erik Larson
King Leopold's Ghost - Adam Hochschild
The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus- Richard Preston
Citizen: An American Lyric - Claudia Rankine
In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom- Yeonmi Park
Cosmos- Carl Sagan
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer- Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Universe in a Nutshell- Stephen Hawking
Racism: A Short History- George Fredrickson
We Should All Be Feminists - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Night - Elie Wiesel
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement - Angela Y. Davis
Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight - Timothy Pachirat
Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America - John Chasteen
Dogland: A Journey to the Heart of America's Dog Problem- Jacki Skole
The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence- Gavin de Becker

MARCH - A book recommended by a celeb
Any celebrity, although it is more fun if you can find something your fave has read and liked. We've had some posts about celebrities' favourite books (here and here), Emma Watson and Florence Welch both have book clubs, you can check out the several celebrity recs at One Grand, or google other lists.

APRIL - A book that has been adapted into an Oscar-nominated movie
There is actually a LOT to choose from. These are just some of them:

Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
Room- Emma Donoghue
The Price of Salt- Patricia Highsmith
The Martian - Andy Weir
Brooklyn- Colm Tóibín
Cold Mountain - Charles Frazier
The Color Purple- Alice Walker
The Danish Girl- David Ebershoff
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail- Cheryl Strayed
No Country For Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
The Return of the King - JRR Tolkien
Q & A - Vikas Swarup
Twelve Years a Slave - Solomon Northup

A more detailed list of books can be found here, at the Oscar’s Library.

MAY - A book that starts with one of the letters in "ONTD"
(The article "The" doesn't count)

Some suggestions:

Othello - William Shakespeare
Oliver Twist- Charles Dickens
Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham
Oryx and Crake- Margaret Atwood
Old Man's War - John Scalzi
Northern Lights Collectors Limited Edition - Phillip Pullman
N or M? - Agatha Christie
Never Let Me Go - Zakuo Ishiguro
Northanger Abbey - Jane AustThe Three-Body Problemen
North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell
NOS4A2 Joe Hill
Noughts & Crosses - Malorie Blackman
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Three Musketeers- Alexandre Dumas
The Three-Body Problem- Liu Cixin
This Savage Song- Victoria Schwab
Three Dark Crowns - Kendare Blake
The Two Towers- JRR Tolkien
Dracula - Bram Stoker
Dark Places - Gillian Flynn
Devil in Winter - Lisa Kleypas
Dealing with Dragons- Patricia C Wrede
Dare Me - Megan Abbott

JUNE - “No fam, it was I!”
Last year gemdiamandis became an ONTD legend after one of her tumblr posts was misattributed to Alan Rickman and went viral after his death. This month, read a book about identity theft (examples here), impostors (list examples here and here), or hoaxes (examples here and here).

JULY - “I don’t know her”
Read a book by a female author whom you have never read anything by. If you need ideas of women authors, you can check out this goodreads list.

AUGUST - FFAF (Free for All Fiction)
This month, read any fiction book you’d like!


SEPTEMBER - A book recommended in an ONTD Book Post
We have regular book posts on ONTD and they are a great way of finding new books to read. It can be something recommended in the post itself, or a book that an ONTDer says they liked, or you can ask for more specific recs in the comments!


OCTOBER - “It’s darksided!”
Gargoyles, psychics, everything’s ungodly! October is a month for spooky reads! Here are some suggestions:

Ghost Story - Peter Straub
My Best Friend's Exorcism - Grady Hendrix
White is for Witching- Helen Oyeyemi
The Child Thief- Brom
The Graveyard Apartment - Mariko Koike
Fledgling- Octavia E. Butler
Night Film- Marisha Pessl
The House Next Door - Anne Rivers Sidons
Certain Dark Things- Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
Harvest Home- Thomas Tryon
The Diviners - Libba Bray
Audition- Ryu Murakami
Annihilation - Jeff Vandermeer
One Thousand and One Ghosts - Alexandre Dumas
The Suicide Motor Club - Christopher Buehlman

NOVEMBER - A book written by a celeb
Some suggestions:

Modern Romance- Aziz Ansari
Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person - Shonda Rhimes
Just Kids - Patti Smith
Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology- Leah Remini
Not My Father's Son - Alan Cumming
Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography - Neil Patrick Harris
Is It Just Me? - Miranda Hart
Yes Please - Amy Poehler
Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny - Holly Madison
Little Girl Lost - Drew Barrymore
Wishful Drinking - Carrie Fisher
In the Country We Love: My Family Divided- Diane Guerrero

DECEMBER - A book that won an award in 2017
Any award you want - you can go high-brow with the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Man Booker Prize or the National Book Award, explore what’s best in speculative fiction with the Hugo and Nebula awards, get scared by the Shirley Jackson or Bram Stoker Awards, read women with the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, fall in love with the Romance Writers of America (RITA Awards), etc!