Lexi’s Comments (group member since Jul 27, 2016)

Lexi’s comments from the Nothing But Reading Challenges group.

DQs Day 1: Ch1 to Ch 22 (pg 1 to 94)

1. Have you read any books by Richard Osman before? If so, did it effect your expectations for this one? Either way, what did you expect going into this book?
I have read all of the Thursday murder club books, and I liked all but the last one which felt a little overdone. The tone is very different and so far, I like them better.

2. What do you think of the writing style with the short chapters and some even in journal style? Do you have any preference on longer versus shorter versus no chapters?
I find it a bit too much. It comes across as a bit immature even if everyone is older adults. I like chapters and don’t like books that have 100 page chapters but this is a bit fragmented for me but it does read promptly.

3. We have now met who I assume are the main characters – Amy, Rosie & Steve. Do you have a favorite so far? What do you think of Steve and Amy's relationship? Do you think we will ever "meet" Adam on page?
I wrote the question, so my answer is a bit obvious. I like that Amy calls her father-in-law but a bit odd that Adam is not really in the picture. I still find everyone a bit young/immature in tone.

Bonus: Do you think the cat will be important to the plot or just on the cover like oh so many books recently?
I would like the cat to play a part and not just be on the cover. I call my cat trouble too at times but she does have a name.

DQs Day 1: Ch1 to Ch 22 (pg 1 to 94)

1. Have you read any books by Richard Osman before? If so, did it effect your expectations for this one? Either way, what did you expect going into this book?

2. What do you think of the writing style with the short chapters and some even in journal style? Do you have any preference on longer versus shorter versus no chapters?

3. We have now met who I assume are the main characters – Amy, Rosie & Steve. Do you have a favorite so far? What do you think of Steve and Amy's relationship? Do you think we will ever "meet" Adam on page?

Bonus: Do you think the cat will be important to the plot or just on the cover like oh so many books recently?

My favorites for fantasy are still mostly women: Lois McMaster Bujold all, Witch King, Riddle-Master (read it as one book and not 3 separate) for those without romance. I like Ilona Andrews and T. Kingfisher for those with romance as a sub-plot but not entirely romance. The Goblin Emperor is good too but I am currently mad at the most recent book.

I put a hold in for a Korean and set in Greece one but the holds are 6 and 4 weeks respectively so if anyone finds one before then, go for it.

Got us a second new one using a book I remembered that Judith had read.

Dungeon Dimensions
500 to 650
author initials found in THINGS
a book entirely without magic (your interpretation)
book with an alliterative title
the word 'wastelands' found in the text or title

Also, oldest prompt is author initial EB or BE and I have none of my TBR list.

Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

The eagerly awaited follow-up to Pulitzer Prize-finalist Tommy Orange’s breakout best seller There There —winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award, the John Leonard Prize, the American Book Award, and one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2018— Wandering Stars traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through to the shattering aftermath of Orvil Red Feather’s shooting in There There.

Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion Prison Castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.

Oakland, 2018. Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield is barely holding her family together after the shooting that nearly took the life of her nephew Orvil. From the moment he awakens in his hospital bed, Orvil begins compulsively googling school shootings on YouTube. He also becomes emotionally reliant on the prescription medications meant to ease his physical trauma. His younger brother, Lony, suffering from PTSD, is struggling to make sense of the carnage he witnessed at the shooting by secretly cutting himself and enacting blood rituals that he hopes will connect him to his Cheyenne heritage. Opal is equally adrift, experimenting with Ceremony and peyote, searching for a way to heal her wounded family.

Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange once again delivers a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous, a book piercing in its poetry, sorrow, and rage—a masterful follow-up to his already-classic first novel, and a devastating indictment of America’s war on its own people.

*Tommy Orange is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma.

New one

Nero (Italy / Rome)
350 to 450
takes place in Italy
tagged political 10x
MC plays a musical instrument
fire on cover

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

In Daretana’s most opulent mansion, a high Imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree spontaneously erupted from his body. Even in this canton at the borders of the Empire, where contagions abound and the blood of the Leviathans works strange magical changes, it’s a death at once terrifying and impossible.

Called in to investigate this mystery is Ana Dolabra, an investigator whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities.

At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol. Din is an engraver, magically altered to possess a perfect memory. His job is to observe and report, and act as his superior’s eyes and ears--quite literally, in this case, as among Ana’s quirks are her insistence on wearing a blindfold at all times, and her refusal to step outside the walls of her home.

Din is most perplexed by Ana’s ravenous appetite for information and her mind’s frenzied leaps—not to mention her cheerful disregard for propriety and the apparent joy she takes in scandalizing her young counterpart. Yet as the case unfolds and Ana makes one startling deduction after the next, he finds it hard to deny that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.

As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the safety of the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.

Featuring an unforgettable Holmes-and-Watson style pairing, a gloriously labyrinthine plot, and a haunting and wholly original fantasy world, The Tainted Cup brilliantly reinvents the classic mystery tale.

As far as I know, I'm not traveling in April so I can take a day for DQs for this one too

I'm good for the first day

Cat wrote: "I'm sad that you are meh about Vanished Birds, as I've been looking forward to it. Have you read Spear by Jimenez? and if so, what were your thoughts on that.

Aurora Rising was so MEH. I got massively irked by the attempt at diversity, which was just SO bad (IMO)"

I liked The Spear Cuts Through Water more than The Vanished Birds. I felt the buildup to the ending made it worth it while I just didn't find this one that interesting. Spear also had more unique world building while corporate overlords in space has been done before.

Aurora Rising was so juvenile and sloppy in writing to me. Everyone was a walking cliche.

Getting mildly stranded on a trip apparently is very good for reading so I am up to #7 (another 5 books)

and - 3- Average and likely not worth the wait
- 4- Good and I wanted to finish the series, but maybe it was too long since I read the first two but it did not have much emotional resonance as the first two
- 4 - fun and great escapism. I am going to try the 2nd one
- cute middle grade and gave it 4 since I am not the age range but no interest in the rest of the series

Thank you. I have deleted and edited my post. The poll section was struggling on my phone. I’m phone only with poor connection right now.

When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi

From the New York Times bestselling author of Starter Villain comes an entirely serious take on a distinctly unserious subject: what would really happen if suddenly the moon were replaced by a giant wheel of cheese.

It's a whole new moooooon.

One day soon, suddenly and without explanation, the moon as we know it is replaced with an orb of cheese with the exact same mass. Through the length of an entire lunar cycle, from new moon to a spectacular and possibly final solar eclipse, we follow multiple characters -- schoolkids and scientists, billionaires and workers, preachers and politicians -- as they confront the strange new world they live in, and the absurd, impossible moon that now hangs above all their lives.

My #2 is also Austen related but was only another 3. Just never really connected with the plot or characters.

I finished one if someone wants to spin for a new one when you have time

My book was a bit weird and only three stars but I’m on the board at least

Karen ⊰✿ wrote: "Lexi wrote: "Well, having read no books, I appear to not even be on the list yet"

We don’t include the 0%s, sorry!"

Oh, I know; I just started one that will count so I can continue to fail miserably while at least being on the board

I'll join the discussion if I can but can't do questions.

How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

We should have known the end was near. So begins Imbolo Mbue’s powerful second novel, How Beautiful We Were.

Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells of a people living in fear amid environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are made—and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interests. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. Their struggle will last for decades and come at a steep price.

Told from the perspective of a generation of children and the family of a girl named Thula who grows up to become a revolutionary, How Beautiful We Were is a masterful exploration of what happens when the reckless drive for profit, coupled with the ghost of colonialism, comes up against one community’s determination to hold on to its ancestral land and a young woman’s willingness to sacrifice everything for the sake of her people’s freedom.